


freedom [doesn't come free]

by Bronte



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but our child deserves better, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Canon Rewrite, Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, F/M, Fluff, Gabriel is a terrible parent, Identity Reveal, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Nathalie is toeing the line of my patience, This fic is going to up your sodium intake by twice the daily limit, Tom and Sabine are the real GOATs, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bronte/pseuds/Bronte
Summary: You know that part where Nathalie just marches into the Dupain Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie with that smug little smirk on her face and literally supports our favourite father of the year as he threatens (I repeat, threatens) our fourteen year old protagonist?Yeah, me too.This is a Chat Blanc re-write.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 311
Kudos: 1276





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This little bitch fest of mine is cross posted on Tumblr.
> 
> It's salty because that's who I am.

**[Intro]**

You know that part where Nathalie just marches into the Dupain Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie with that smug little smirk on her face and literally supports our favourite father of the year as he  _ threatens  _ (I repeat,  _ threatens _ ) our fourteen year old protagonist?

I know you do. You probably reeled in aghast when Marinette looked on desperately as Gabriel told her to break up with his son. You probably roared in indignation when Tom told Nathalie to leave now and never come back. And if you're anything like me, you probably wondered why her parents didn't step in like mine probably would have, because if someone threatened me in front of my fam, there would have been fireworks whether I liked it or not.

It's been 2 weeks since Chat Blanc and that's  _ still  _ the part that's pissing me off the most. 

And you all know what that means *cracks knuckles*

~

**[Part 1]**

After Nathalie leaves the Dupain Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie with Gabriel's bedazzled iPad in tow, Marinette runs upstairs to cry her heart out as a fourteen year old teen is expected to do when threatened by a forty something year old fashion mogul. Tom and Sabine exchange words below before closing up shop a little earlier than usual because nobody threatens their family and gets away with it.

Sipping one of Sabine's "Fancy Aunty" teas from Shanghai, Tom and Sabine come to a conclusion. This conclusion is not a long shot by any means; it's fairly clear what kind of father Gabriel is because they are parents and quite frankly, they seem like decent ones who care deeply about their daughter. Parents like that tend to have a pretty good bullshit radar and Gabriel and his lackeys? 

They  _ reek _ .

So, creeping up the stairs of their daughter's bedroom, they peek through the trap door and hear the sounds of their daughter crying into her cat shaped pillow and they know it's their time to shine. Buckle down baby girl, because Gabriel's garbage behaviour is about to…

...wait for it…

...be discussed! Because that's what people do, or should do when your daughter is being bullied by an adult male in power. And when Sabine pops up into her daughter's bed platform and gives her the snuggle she oh so deserves, they have a talk. Of course, Tom can't fit because he's three times the size of Sabine's entire torso so he just chills from the baseline and adds positive reinforcement now and then as enthusiastically as possible.

The basis of the conversation is simple, though it takes a while to get it through Marinette's stubborn and steadfast noggin. Gabriel is manipulate. Gabriel is using you as a chess piece. Gabriel is trying to control his son through you. And this is not how we treat the people that we love. We treat them with kindness, we listen to our kids even when they're making stupid decisions and we support them when they mess up. 

Together, they make a decision. It's not half baked by any means but it's not the best idea either. Honestly though, it's the only one they can come up with that doesn't require Marinette to cut her nose off to spite her face. Going belly up to stay in Gabriel's good books isn't feasible; this is a hostage situation. No, she's got to go to the source.

So, surrounded by her family for support, she Facetimes Adrien.

She tells him  _ everything _ .

~

**[Part 2]**

Adrien can be described in a dainty handful of ways. Polite. Kind. Quiet. Friendly. Good natured. He doesn't have a temper. He's one hundred percent perfect. There isn't a mean bone in his body.

On a completely different note, we have Chat Noir. Our masked crusader of leather and love is boisterous and spirited. A stuntman, if you will. Chat Noir soaks up any and all drama around him like he's living his best life in a Korean soap opera which, admittedly, perhaps he is. 

Because Father did something he truly didn't see coming. 

(Let's just say that Paris didn't get a lot of sleep that night.)

Yowling and traipsing across rooftops and tree limbs, Chat Noir doesn't quite know how else to express himself. He has emotions! They are big and they are strong and they're coming out in a way that Chat honestly doesn't know how to control. He wasn’t exactly born into a family that self regulates very well, all things considered; unbeknownst to Chat, crazy clearly runs in the family gene pool.

So our debonaire cat diva oscillates between stomping and crying like an anime Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde until Plagg can’t take it any longer. The little voice in the back of Chat's head pretty much says it all: just cataclysme something already and screw the consequences!

Luckily, (or unluckily) Plagg is large and in change and doesn't hesitate for a second to turn his wielder's power into an all out power affair.

(@Gabriel blames the destruction of every single one of their adverts on an akuma attack the following day)

On two hours of sleep, Adrien shoves a croissant down his throat and thumps through the Agreste foyer because  _ of course _ his father won't take his calls and speak to him this morning. Adrien,  _ his son _ , had to add his name to the business Google Doc; he's booked himself a ten minute appointment with dear old dad three days from now at 18h.

As if. All gloves are off now.

You see, what everyone in Adrien’s sadly diminutive circle of caregivers have all failed to realise is that Adrien, our sunshine child, truly doesn’t give a rats ass about rules. He escapes his room every single night to go prancing across Paris like Tuxedo Mask in the hopes that Ladybug will fall in love with him. He sneaks out of his twelve hundred daily responsibilities to go hang out with his friends. He cranks the speakers on his iPhone and pretends to practice piano because yolo. This rebellious baby is masquerading around as a perfect peach and Adrien’s only just got a  _ taste _ of being the unruly Eljoras in his own French fairy tale, not to mention getting in touch with his wicked side when handling Lila. 

So Adrien gets into the Mercedes and cracks his knuckles.

Time to get down to business.

When Adrien shows up for school ten minutes later, he takes Marinette by the waist and shoves his tongue down her throat so spectacularly that even the Gorilla turns a shocking shade of purple. Marinette’s soul physically escapes her body, which Alya probably captures on TikTok, and when she does scrabble back from the pearly gates, she's beet red and gorgeous. A mischievous, toothy grin all but confirms that he's feeling a mighty need to rebel and let loose today, which is why he skips fencing after school and eats macarons with Marinette because 🖕

When the Gorilla eventually finds him that afternoon, Nathalie hands him his ass in a handbasket and Gabriel grounds him via iPad for the foreseeable future. Adrien doesn't even bother looking guilty and the tantrum Father pulls is just the icing on the cake. Adrien, genius as he is, flips the switch on his VPN and spends the rest of his evening hatching his harebrained plan.

~

**[Part 3]**

By midnight, Adrien has come to the conclusion that he is horrible at making plans. He can execute plans, he can applaud the people that make the plans and he can certainly give credit where credit is due but he's no Ladybug; Marinette wears the creative brain pants in this relationship, not that she knows that it's him behind the mask.

Yet.

Adrien sighs and looks longingly into the night sky like a yandere protagonist. Father cancelled his data plan and blocked his mobile from the WIFI, which means he can't FaceTime Marinette or anyone else for that matter. He's on his own tonight and it shows. The schemes he has come up with aren't the cleverest by any means; Adrien knows he's not the sharpest light on the tree.

But, appropriately frightened by the fact that Father is trying to ruin his OTP forever, Adrien decides to be extra covert by scribbling all of his "plans" on the back of the Tokyo Mew Mew poster he'd bought at his school's book fundraiser last month because he thought it would be funny. Ichigo Momomiya? Chat Noir?  _ Irony _ . 

Adrien actually chef kisses at the brilliance of his humour. Across the room, Plagg begs for mercy.

Option 1: Fake his own death. Admittedly, this is not the best option but hey, Stefano DiMera staged his own murder at least eight times and it always worked out for him, right? He could even wear a disguise and attend his own funeral! The  _ drama! _

Option 2: Run away and join the circus. This is problematic, of course, because he's extremely recognizable with or without a mask on his perfectly symmetrical features. Now, if he got a really cool scar on his cheek or something, he might get away with it and gain some street cred. Hell, he could tattoo his face like Post Malone and join a gang!

At this point, Plagg snatches his wielder's pen right out of his hand and strikes through the first two points.

Fair enough. They were terrible anyway.

Option 3: Give in. Let Marinette break up with him and keep dating her in secret. This would be nearly impossible, but they could try and pull it off. Adrien wraps his arms around his middle and physically aches at the thought of all the heartbreak he would put Marinette through. She doesn't deserve any of this, and option three would only punish her even more that this situation already has.

Option 4: Project Emancipation. He has absolutely no idea how to do this but he's the age of consent in France and thereby completely free to move out of his house if he so chooses. But where would he go? And how would he pay for anything? His inheritance is locked away in a trust fund and there isn't a single place in Paris that would hide him without the press eventually hearing about it. 

Adrien's already rocky mood suddenly takes a nose dive into despondent territory. He's screwed no matter what he chooses! 

As if by fate, something serendipitous occurs. His phone lights up and Adrien peers down at it only to be flabbergasted by the name he sees appear on the screen. 

1 New SMS Message  
Sabine Cheng

He taps in his password and finds the first text message he's received in months (who uses SMS these days anyway?), his shocked expression illuminated by the blue light of his screen.

**_Marinette told us what happened today. I have some reading material for you to look at tomorrow. You might be interested in what it has to say. I'll send it along with Marinette. Sleep well._ **

He doesn't make it to school until third period thanks to the rigorous mini course he had to take with Nathalie on how to be polite (writing "I will respect my father's dominion over me" two hundred times was excruciating, but at least he was still able to go to school afterwards). During attendance, Marinette hands him a pink Dupain Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie envelope in an operation so covert he swears she knows something he doesn't.

Across the chemistry lab, Marinette's lips form five distinct syllables. Adrien can't help but nod; he's sorry too and it makes sense that she could be spying on them considering she's Gabriel's new hit model, sausage braids and all. He avoids both Marinette and Lila like the plague for the rest of the afternoon and reads Sabine's message in a toilet stall because even Lila wouldn't dare follow him into the boy's washroom after the sore stomach act he just pulled off.

About six pages of legal jargon emerges from the powder pink folds, two of which cover his right to go to public school. He had no idea that Father wouldn't have a foot to stand on if he pulled him out of school as a punishment; by law, the state could interfere and order Adrien back into the system.

Page 3 is about opening your own bank account. Literal light bulbs begin to spring to life above his head as he begins to connect the dots.

Page 4 and 5 discuss child endangerment, neglect and abuse laws in France. Adrien's jaw practically unhinges. He loses feeling in his toes.

The final leaf of brightly coloured stationery is the kicker. Page 6 is all about the remuneration he should have been receiving as a child model. He should have signed copies of his contracts. He should have a whole boatload of legal documents regarding his lucrative employment, except he's never signed a contract or a tax form in his life.

Scrawled on a sticky note, Adrien reads Sabine's only comment on the matter.

**_Life has a funny way of working out when you least expect it, even within the darkest of storm clouds._ **

Adrien takes a shaky breath and slouches against the barrier between stalls.

This changes  _ everything. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back with more of your allowed daily consumption of Chat Blanc salt. Enjoy!

**[Part 4]**

Adrien doesn’t bother trying to get out of dinner. Nathalie’s been watching him like a hawk since being grounded yesterday and Adrien’s going to have to lay low if he’s going to keep both her and Father off his trail. Adrien likes to hope that they probably underestimate just how determined he can be, especially now that he’s learned so much about himself during his tenure as Chat Noir. Before donning his Miraculous, Adrien had always hoped that he could be brave when faced with danger but now he  _ knows _ that he can face down even the toughest of obstacles in his path with courage and perseverance.

(And grace, too.)

So when an akuma alert begins to chime on his phone (he thankfully still gets those despite having no data and no WIFI), Adrien patiently waits for Nathalie to leave him alone in the dining room and run off to wherever Father has set up his safe room. After the events of Jackady, Gabriel had insisted on hiding somewhere in the lower levels of the house whenever an akuma cropped up and Nathalie usually went off with him nowadays, which leaves Adrien with the perfect opportunity to sneak out and join up with Ladybug.

Adrien takes a peek at the updated emergency alert and pauses for a moment, his mind racing. Could he pull this off, just this once? Ladybug could easily handle M. Rat on her own for a little while until…

Adrien’s heart begins racing inside his chest. This would be his most daring stunt, his most audacious achievement. He’d only seen this being done in action films but...Adrien takes three deep breaths and leaps up from the table before his mind can argue with him otherwise and scampers across the foyer into Father’s abandoned atelier.

There it sits. 

Nathalie’s desk.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Adrien wriggles the mouse and stares longingly at the screen. All of the Gabriel technology requires a two step verification process to make sure that designs aren’t stolen and correspondence between buyers remains entirely confidential. Adrien knows the PIN as it’s the same on every device in the mansion, but the fingerprint?

Nathalie’s computer will only unlock for her.

Gnawing on his lip, Adrien glances around the office and spots exactly what he’s looking for within a handful of seconds. Nathalie’s the only one in the mansion who drinks  _ Vernière _ bottled water and Adrien snatches it up by the lid and holds it up to the light, scouring it with his eyes. He quickly finds the missing piece of the puzzle he needs and sprints over to the stationary drawer, ripping off a clear piece of tape from the plastic dispenser. He gently presses the tape to the uppermost fingerprint on the neck of the glass bottle and carefully peels it back off, sealing in the ridges of the print with a second piece of tape.

“The name’s Agreste,” Adrien murmurs to Plagg, practically skipping back over to Nathalie’s computer, “Adrien Agreste.”

With Nathalie’s fingerprint firmly pressed against the scanner, Adrien types in the PIN and nearly squeals with glee as the desktop comes to life in front of him. Buzzing with adrenaline, he knows he doesn’t have much time so he plops himself down on Nathalie’s chair and immediately jumps into the search function to find his file within the hundreds of gigabytes of data. He knows he has a  _ carte Vitale _ somewhere (not that he’s ever been allowed to actually carry it) and on it, he’ll be able to find his social security number. From there, he’ll be able to open his own bank account without Father or Nathalie ever knowing about it, which is why he needs to find the electronic file on himself STAT.

He discovers its whereabouts after a few moments and clicks on it, opening the camera app on his phone while it loads. The file is larger than he’d anticipated but the lag makes sense once it pops up onto the screen; the document is chock full of professional photos measuring his body and facial features at every growing stage of his life in a somewhat frighteningly specific way and the comments beside each picture aren't much better. He starts snapping photos and scrolling from one page to another until he finally finds the information he’s looking for, which is listed in a separate box that reads more like a videogame statistic on his character than a rundown of a family member. 

Adrien exits the file and grimaces at Plagg, “Did that seem kind of weird? Or is it just me?”

“Kid…” Plagg trails off, his eyes speaking volumes. The kwami doesn’t even have to answer that question for Adrien to know the answer, which gives him all the more courage for what he’s about to pull off next.

Ten minutes later, Adrien has photos of bank statements, tax forms and undeniable proof that Adrien has never once been legally paid for the work he’s done for Father. This could put the Gabriel brand in a world of legal pain and it physically hurts Adrien to even think of the possibility that he’d be destroying his relationship with Father forever, but Father barely speaks with him anyway nowadays and even when he does, it’s usually harshly and rarely fatherly, which is what he’s been desperately craving from him for the last two years. The screen becomes blurry as he logs out of Nathalie’s computer and jogs back into the dining room, unshed tears beading in his eyelashes. How did it get so bad? And why did it have to end up like this? Why didn’t Father love him anymore?

The cassoulet he’d been eating suddenly turns to ashes in his mouth and Adrien decides he’s better off uploading the photos onto a USB sooner rather than later in case Nathalie confiscates his phone. Disappearing upstairs into his bedroom, Adrien turns his VPN back on and double checks that Ladybug has indeed vanquished the thirteenth incarnation of M. Rat (all within fifteen minutes, of course) before transferring all the photos off his SIM card and saving a copy of them onto the cloud drive of the new, secret email he had created for himself last evening. He plucks the USB from his desktop and shoves it down the front of his jeans just as he hears a familiar set of footsteps on the landing in front of his room, slamming the button on his computer and yanking open the textbook on his desktop.

“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Nathalie states as she barges into his bedroom, the thinly veiled disappointment in her voice made clear as she peers down at him, “You will come down and finish at once.”

“I’m not hungry,” Adrien responds, his stomach doing flip flops inside his abdomen, “And I have homework to do.”

“You will not disobey me,” Nathalie’s nostrils flare, “M. Agreste will be displeased to know that you haven’t properly comprehended today’s lesson on good behaviour.”

Adrien barely keeps from snapping back and gnashes down on his tongue, “If I eat, I’ll make myself sick.”

“Your dietary requirements are not up for discussion,” Nathalie glances down at her iPad, undeterred, “If you do not come down immediately, M. Agreste will be forced to remove you from school.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little harsh?” Adrien growls, unable to stop himself.

“Your disobedience would be unwise.”

The unspoken threat is made clear and laid bare in the space between them. Two paths sit diverged before him; he could take the high road and go down to finish his dinner, giving him another day or two to figure things out before completely upending his life. He could also tell Nathalie to fuck off and leave him alone.

Miserably, he chooses the former, “Fine.”

Nathalie’s smirk of victory is unbearable, but she won’t be wearing it for very much longer. Today’s events were the fodder he’d needed.

Nothing was going to stop him now.

~

**[Part 5]**

Marinette’s heart nearly leaps out of her throat and onto her homework at the sudden clash of voices in her living room; it's 21h on a weeknight and Sabine and Tom should be in bed, which is why Marinette immediately panics and starts choking on the apple she's snacking on.

“Please, I’m so sorry to disturb you,” a male voice says from beneath the floorboards and Marinette spasmodically scrabbles to her feet and launches herself across the floor like catapulted ragdoll, “I just had to get this to you for safety.”

Propelling her limbs down her ladder and somehow successfully landing on her feet, Marinette all but somersaults into her kitchen and does her best impression of an octopus, wrapping herself around Adrien in a hug so tight she swears she hears him wheeze. She doesn’t care; she hasn’t been able to message him or hold his hand or do anything with him all day, especially with Gabriel’s little spy Lila breathing down her neck every waking moment. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks breathlessly, relaxing as he finally returns her embrace. Her parents look both worried and relieved in a strange sort of way, and after a moment, Marinette stands back to let Adrien explain himself.

“I have this,” he says, fishing a USB drive from his coat pocket, “It’s got everything on it. Tax returns, bank statements, copies of modelling contracts that I’ve never signed. I don’t even have a trust fund set up,” Adrien’s voice wavers, “Nathalie told me I’d get access to it when I was twenty one, but there’s no evidence that one even exists.”

“Oh my…” Sabine takes the USB from his proffered palm and considers it, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Adrien’s Adam's apple bobs in his throat, “Nathalie just threatened to take me out of school because I didn’t eat enough dinner. I think I’m sure.”

Tom visibly recoils, “Marinette, grab my laptop from my bedroom,” he says, wrapping a burly arm around his new son’s shoulder, “Adrien, we’re about to set you up a bank account. I’ll even cosign for you. Sabine?”

“Already on it,” Sabine’s phone is pressed up against her ear within a matter of seconds, “ _ Nǐ hǎo jiù jiu _ , how are you? ...good, good...remember that boy I was telling you about? ...yes, that one. Well, he’s here and he has an entire USB drive full of evidence…"

~

Marinette barely sleeps that night, what with the boatloads of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Adrien had stayed long past midnight and she was so anxious about him getting home safely that she’d yoyo’d her way over to the mansion a half hour later just to make sure he was tucked in bed. She doesn’t know how he snuck out in the first place and she didn’t even think to ask because of all of the craziness that had happened and  _ god _ , she never thought things would get this crazy. She always knew Gabriel was controlling, but this? This was insane! She couldn’t believe her eyes when she’d scrolled through the pictures of Adrien that had been taken over the years, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull. Gabriel was a veritable fashion icon and  _ inspirateur _ but she literally writhed at the way he’d taken Adrien’s professional appearance and commented on it in the personal file as if he were no more than an object needing to be fixed. The fact that Gabriel had actually considered booking him in for cosmetic surgery to remove the three moles on his chest to prepare for future modelling campaigns was insane!

And judging by the gobsmacked expression on Adrien’s features, her boyfriend thought just the same.

Crawling out of bed just before 7h the next morning, Marinette brushes her teeth and dresses as quickly as she can manage before ducking downstairs and preparing her lunch. She takes out a second bag and fills it with goodies that she knows he loves in the hopes that she can break into Adrien's locker before Lila gets there and hide them inside.

Keeping her distance from Adrien is torture but Marinette doesn’t know how else to go about it. Her parents had convinced her not to play into Gabriel’s hands by deceiving Adrien and breaking up with him outright, but it still breaks her heart so much to know that she couldn’t be with him freely any longer. If Marinette broke her side of the “deal” she hadn’t even agreed to, Gabriel and Nathalie would rip him out of school and Marinette wouldn’t be able to see him at all which would make their plan ever harder to execute. Marinette had to save Adrien and she would do anything in her power to help the love of her life, even if it meant absolutely torturing herself in the process.

~

Marinette may or may not have been directly responsible for lobbing a ball in Lila’s direction and tripping her during their gym period, which means she’s got at least twenty minutes without the liar’s grubby eyes following her wherever she goes. Marinette chooses to spend that time wisely and yanks Adrien into the soundbooth beside the music room, kissing him thoroughly on the lips.

“Wow,” Adrien gushes after a moment, his shock turning into elation, “I think I really needed that.”

“Me too,” Marinette brushes his bangs from his eyes and kisses the corner of his lips, his nose, his cheeks, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” he says, weaving their fingers together and wrapping his arm around her waist, “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Marinette all but liquifies in his embrace and nearly collapses when Adrien captures her lips again, snogging her like his life depends on it. And hey, maybe it does in a way, now that her great uncle at Zhao & Cheng Law has access to every file on his USB drive. The next forty eight hours would make or break him in the most spectacular of ways and Marinette can’t help the horrible feeling of dread in her heart that this could be the very last time they would be able to kiss like this ever again.

~

**[Part 6]**

A lot of things happen all at once.

The news breaks early Saturday morning and it takes all of ten minutes for the Shanghainese-French lawyer representing Adrien’s missing assets to be traced back to Marinette’s family. Sabine and Tom greet the flock of reporters in their bakery with open arms, their smiles terse but pleasant as they explain their side of the story as vaguely as they can.

“We’ve booked appointments with the health and safety officers at least twice a week for the foreseeable future,” Sabine says, her eyes as sharp as the scalpels they use to cut details out of fondant, “We’re fully prepared to fight any attacks on our business and livelihood in case of retaliation.”

The press devours that particular soundbite with slobbering delight as the entire city rises up in arms, savagely enthralled with the latest celebrity drama. Twitter feeds explode with support for Adrien as legal experts flood the twenty four hour news channels, revelling in the upcoming court case should Adrien decide not to drop the charges. It’s juicy, it’s controversial and there’s nothing the French love more than an absolutely ludicrous rompus between rich people in the press.

Romeo and Juliet, they call them. The Agreste’s versus the Cheng’s, like the Capulets and the Montagues with Lord Capulet starring as our favourite father of the year. Memes begin to crop up all over the place, most of which call out Gabriel for being the world’s most prolific jackass. It gets even worse when Adrien shares one of them on his personal Instagram which is liked, commented on and screenshotted so many times within the first half hour of being posted that Instagram actually crashes for a few minutes. The blackout is just enough time for Gabriel's team to shut down his entire social media platform which only leads to further chaos.

#saveadrien trends across Europe and beyond.

Marinette prays to every kwami in her box that Adrien isn’t being skinned alive by his father as she paces around in her room, too nervous to do anything other than wave her arms around and practice scripts in her head for when she’s inevitably hunted down by the press screeching her name. She has no idea where he is or what he's doing since he still doesn't have data on his phone and she hopes to god that he isn't still in the mansion…

...but where else would he be on a Saturday morning?

_ knock knock knock _

Marinette's screech of panic knocks several picture frames off the walls. She leaps onto the surface of her desk in a fit of pure Ladybug prowess, wielding a floor lamp, "Who's there?!"

There's a muffled holler from above her head and there's only one person who could be on the other end of that question...unless the paparazzi have learned how to climb up to her balcony.

Bursting through her trap door fully prepared for an ambush, Marinette grabs Chat Noir by the bell and yanks him down onto her mattress with murderous intent, "What the heck are you doing here?!"

"I could ask you the same thing," Chat Noir grunts, landing flat on his face, "Except you live here."

"Exactly!" Marinette scolds him, "There's a million paparazzi outside the bakery! What were you thinking? Oh my god, now they’re going to think I’m cheating on Adrien with you!

"Hey now," Chat has long become accustomed to Marinette's tendency to catastrophize, unbeknownst to her, "I snuck in from behind and laid low. No one saw me."

"You can't be sure of that," Marinette grouses, crossing her arms across her chest, "Now, shouldn't you be out saving Paris or something?"

"I am, in a way," Chat shrugs, "I kind of have a favour to ask you."

"A favour?"

"Yup," Chat replies, unzipping his right side pocket and fishing out a crumpled piece of lined paper, "This is for you."

“For me?” Marinette says, unfolding the paper in her hands. Her curious expression quickly drains of colour, her mouth gaping like a fish, “Oh god, where is he?!”

“He’s safe for now,” Chat tries to assure her, throwing his palms up in defense, “But he’d really like an answer from your parents.”

“They’re downstairs,” Marinette replies, her entire body heating up, “I can’t believe...can’t Nino take him in?”

Chat’s eyes widen, his lips twisting downwards, “You don’t want Adrien to stay here?”

“No!” Marinette gesticulates in that strange, convulsive way of hers anytime she’s even remotely flustered and Chat has to duck to keep from being inadvertently slapped across the face, “I mean, yes! I mean, our flat is  _ tiny _ and he’s used to his own mansion...we don’t even have a guest bedroom! He would have to…”

Marinette trails off and turns a vibrant shade of cherry red.

“...uh, Marinette? Are you okay?”

She opens her mouth. She closes it.

Chat waves his fingers in front of her eyes, “Mari?”

There’s a strange white light taking over her bedroom. Is this what dying feels like?

“Okay, Marinette? I’m going to need you to take a deep breath for me, alright?”

Breathing is overrated. Her heart goes into overdrive.

“Marinette!”

Nope. 

“Marinette!”

This is it. This is the end.

Chat violently shakes her shoulders, “MARINETTE!”

Air finally floods her lungs as she inhales, sputtering all over herself as Chat continues to knock some sense into her thick skull. The voice inside her head she often attributes to Tikki tells her she’s being about as extra as a vsco girl at a lululemon half price sale and to get a grip on herself. The other voice in her head, the one she often attributes to her increasingly dwindling grasp on reality, screams endlessly into the void when her common sense usually resides.

“Oh my god,” she wheezes, now lying flat on her back with Chat’s worried eyes peering down at her, “Adrien would have to sleep in my bedroom.”

Chat blinks, “Oh.”

“The boy I love more than anyone else in the entire freaking world is going to have to sleep in my bedroom,” Marinette grasps Chat by the elbows and stares wide-eyed at the ceiling.

“You love him more than anyone else in the world?” Chat asks softly, and Marinette is far to preoccupied with the terror-stricken screeching between her ears to notice the pink in his cheeks.

“Chat,” she turns her thousand yard stare in his direction, her eyes boring into his, “Adrien is my  _ soulmate _ . We are going to get married and we are going to have three children and a hamster and we are going to live the rest of our lives together until we die side by side just like they did in The Notebook.”

“Oh my god,” Chat quivers, tears welling in his eyes, “That is the most romantic thing I have ever heard in my entire life.”

“I know,” she whispers, patting his hands, “I’ll invite you to our wedding. I’ve already picked out a theme and venue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These idiots are in _love_.
> 
> Check out my tumblr for more updates and info on how to convince me to write more of this bad boi!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The salt continues...

**[Part 7]**

Saturday evening rolls around and the Dupain Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie has battened down the hatches. The doors are bolted, the windows are locked and the security system in the storefront is all lit up and ready to go just in case someone tries to break in through either entrance. Tom won’t put it past the Agreste’s, especially after the press release Gabriel’s iniquitous little shit of a lawyer released just a few hours ago.

 _“M. Agreste believes his fifteen year old son is simply going through a rebellious phase likely due to the repugnant company he has been keeping as of late,”_ M. Ledroit adjusts his glasses over his hooked nose and leers into the camera, _“Adrien will be dropping his charges shortly, I can assure you, and this will all be just an embarrassing memory for the young man. I’m sure you can all understand where M. Agreste is coming from.”_

 _“Where is Adrien now?”_ a reporter asks, waving her voice recorder in M. Ledroit’s direction.

 _“Likely in the company of his unsavoury friends,”_ M. Ledroit taps the side of his nose with a wink and a smirk, _“Once he is found and secured, Adrien will be leaving Paris for the foreseeable future. M. Agreste is a firm believer in setting a precedent. He hopes that the authoritative actions he takes as a father will serve as an example to other parents dealing with unruly, disrespectful teenagers.”_

“I am going to have a few choice words with that man when I see him again,” Sabine ravages a daikon with a meat cleaver, the ominous thud of the blade against the cutting board sending shivers down Adrien’s spine, “He makes you sound as if you’re the criminal, not him.”

“You’ll be safe here for the meantime,” Tom responds, patting his beloved new son on the shoulder, “And Marinette will have your back at school. If anything happens, we’re only a handful of metres away.”

Adrien gulps, nervous butterflies waging havoc in his stomach, “Thank you.”

Marinette pads down the ladder from her bedroom with a tentative smile, “Chat Noir delivered your bags in case you needed anything. I dragged them down and put them beside the air mattress.”

Still too tense to move, Adrien shows his appreciation with a nod and tries to get a hold of himself. He may be safe from Father’s clutches at the moment, but for how long? And if Father did manage to grab Adrien and take him out of Paris without a choice, what would happen? Where would he go? And how would Paris fare without Chat Noir to help protect it? Adrien swallows against the bile bubbling at the back of his throat and focuses instead on Sabine’s cutting techniques as she begins to expertly butcher a whole chicken.

“Gabriel can’t force you to drop the charges against him,” Sabine yanks the wings out of their sockets with a sickening pop, “And my uncle cannot be influenced, especially by an entitled white man with a superiority complex. No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” Tom and Adrien say simultaneously. Marinette takes one look at the gleaming, razor sharp blade in her mother’s hands and carefully backs away.

“That, and you’re legally allowed to leave the house should you choose,” she continues, holding her enormous cleaver aloft before slamming it down and separating the wings from the body, “He has no legal right to keep you against your will or take you anywhere you don’t want to go. We will make sure of that.”

Sabine bisects the backbone of the chicken in one fell swoop and glances upwards, her glare of contempt searing itself into Adrien’s memory as something he never wants to be on the receiving end of.

“Mark my words,” she jabs the tip of her blade into the wooden cutting board and plucks the smaller, but no less intimidating paring knife from the block, “Gabriel will regret the day he ever tried to threaten my daughter.”

~

“Hey Marinette?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still awake?”

“...yeah.”

Adrien blinks up at the ceiling from the air mattress he’s laying on and desperately tries to keep his legs from kicking around like he’s treading water, “Is this weird? Me being here?”

He turns his head at the rustling of blankets and spots Marinette’s head popping up from behind the railing of her bed platform, “Kinda?”

He sighs, except none of the pent up tension leaves his body, "I'm so sorry I'm putting you and your family through this. I should have just sucked it up."

There's a huff and a thump and if Adrien wasn't already aware that the love of his life was Ladybug in the flesh, he would have probably wet himself when she appeared beside him not a second later, "You should have absolutely _not_ sucked it up. Your father and Nathalie were taking advantage of you and you don't deserve _any of this."_

Desperately lovestruck, Adrien makes one of those pitiful noises he only ever associates with watching kitten videos and The Bachelor, “Y-yeah?”

“Yeah,” she hisses, her face so close to his that he can smell her toothpaste, “And we are going to get your father and teach him a lesson.”

She rises to her feet and cracks her knuckles, an expression of pure determination drawing her eyebrows together. Clammy and smitten beyond a shadow of a doubt, Adrien is fairly sure someone has cranked the heat in her bedroom to 300°C. 

“No one has ever stood up to Father before,” Adrien blurts, sweating in her divine presence, “I’m kind of scared of what he’s going to do.”

“Me too,” Marinette admits, squatting back down beside him yet again, “I know he’s going to try and ruin my fashion career.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she shrugs, “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Adrien fiddles with his hands for lack of anything better to do, “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“Oh, there’s always something,” Marinette squares her shoulders and offers him a weary smile, “I just haven’t thought of it yet. When I do, I’ll let you know so you don’t have to worry so much.”

“Th—thanks,” Adrien’s fanatical hero worship of his girlfriend is entirely lost on Marinette as she tucks her hair behind her ear; gazing at her now, he swears he’s going to build her one of those fancy Greek shrines in her honour one day, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she smiles, taking his hand and squeezing it, “We should really get to bed.”

“Yeah…” he trails off, mooning longingly, “Can I have a goodnight kiss?”

If there’s something that Marinette adores more than kissing her extremely handsome model boyfriend, she has yet to find it, “Of course.”

Bending down, Marinette gently captures his lips with hers, cupping his cheek in her palm. It’s soft and sweet and makes Adrien’s toes tingle and _god_ , he loves this girl more than anything in the entire galaxy. He wills his hands to move after a moment and brushes his fingers through her hair, gently scraping his nails against her scalp because he loves it when she does that to him. She makes a little sound and her lips shift ever so slightly before pulling back, her cheeks perfectly pink.

“Good night Adrien,” she says, scrabbling back to her feet and hesitating for one awkward moment before running back up her ladder, “Um...see you tomorrow.”

Still dizzy with euphoria, Adrien sighs like the lovestruck fool he is, “Good night Marinette.”

~

**[Part 8]**

It’s Sunday evening and everything about living with Adrien is absolutely perfect.

Except...

Adrien talks to himself. A lot. She’s caught him having full tilt conversations at least six times already and they haven’t even had dinner yet, which is just...well, it’s a little weird. Is all of this stress between him and his father making him lose it? Has he always talked to himself this much? Is it a coping mechanism? A nervous tic? Marinette wonders if it’s an only child thing, which kind of makes sense considering he doesn’t exactly get out a lot. But then again, she’s an only child too and she’s isn’t _that_ crazy.

Accompanied by a hypothetical laugh track, Tikki gives her _The Look_ ™.

“Hey now,” Unwilling to acknowledge that she’s also been talking out loud to herself the whole time, Marinette takes the low road, “I was obviously talking to you the whole time, Tikki.”

“Mmhmm,” The Miraculous of Creation takes another bite of her macaron, and Marinette chooses to count her losses.

~

Twenty four hours into his emancipation and living with Marinette is absolutely perfect.

First of all, no one can pull off morning hair like Marinette. Even with it all over the place, she looks every bit the angelic princess she is. And without make-up? _God,_ how did she do that? How could she possibly look so gorgeous with drool-crust at the corner of her perfectly shaped lips? How could she appear so dazzling in the morning light with all of those sheet wrinkles smooshed against her face?

He has no explanation. She is perfect in every possible way and he is simply too smitten to think straight.

Except…

Well, Adrien isn’t the best at making plans and, as we’ve pointed out already, nothing’s changed. He hasn’t suddenly grown the ability to put two and two together just by being in his brilliant partner’s proximity and although Adrien is disappointed, he’s not entirely surprised. He’s smart, but why isn’t he _smart_? Like, if you were to Google “book smart and street dumb” in the Miraculous universe, you’d find a picture of Adrien grinning like a loon into the camera because, for a boy with an IQ of 145, he sure has the acumen of a toddler in a chocolate shop sometimes. For all his smarts, he can’t seem to figure anything out without her for the life of him. What did she see in him? And how was he going to deal with Father if they somehow got separated? She’s the brains in their relationship; she wears the trousers. And him? All he wears in a pair of ungodly orange sneakers with butterflies embossed into the fabric, which is why he’s currently picking at their seams on her balcony wondering how the hell he’s going to hide the fact that he’s Chat Noir from her now that they live together.

“I was wondering where you were.”

Adrien panics and clasps his heart like a delicate English maiden swooning upon the moors, gasping at the sudden appearance of the love of his life from beneath her trap door, “I love you.”

Marinette blinks, “I love you too?”

“Oh good,” Adrien seems to lose several of his bones all at once, melting to the floor from where he’d been sitting tangled up like a pretzel, “I was...umm…”

She tips her head to the side, “Are you okay?”

“Yes?” Adrien swallows nervously, “I mean no? Maybe?”

“Adrien…”

“I’m just really scared that Father is going to…” Adrien flails a bit and it’s the strangest gesture Marinette has ever seen him make, “...I don’t know, kidnap me? Bulldoze my school? Who knows!”

“It’ll be okay,” Marinette immediately rushes to assure him and having her arms wrapped around him is the balm he'd needed to soothe his anxiety, “Together, everything will be alright, I promise.”

~

As fate would have it, everything was _not_ alright the next day.

The sidewalks in front of Collège François Dupont were teeming with reporters and police officers, not to mention the Mercedes parked smack dab in front of the staircase. Adrien walks towards the bakery doors at least six times and turns around again just as quickly, completely paralyzed by the insanity wrecking havoc just across the street.

“I can’t do this.”

“Yes you can,” Marinette laces her fingers between his and squeezes, holding on tight, “I’m going to be right here beside you the whole time.”

“What about phys ed?” Adrien’s knees quake, “What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“Nino has you covered,” Marinette responds, her eyes widening as a firetruck appears, “What is going on out there?”

“Maybe Father really did decide to burn the school down…” Adrien trails off, watching in horror as smoke begins to billow from the courtyard of their collège. He’s eighty five percent convinced that Father is committing arson when both of their phones chime, announcing an akuma alert in their arrondissement.

They exchange a glance. Marinette looks at Adrien and mistakes his consternation for fear. Adrien stares at Marinette like a deer caught in headlights and wonders how the heck he’s going to pull this one off.

“Uh,” Adrien sputters dumbly, “I think I need to go pee.”

Having turned her attention back to the leaping flames in an attempt to analyse the situation, Marinette tears her eyes away from the fire, “What?”

“I mean—” Adrien’s eyes rove around in sheer terror, “I, uh...I gotta go.”

He releases her hand and scampers back up the stairs, “Adrien! Are you okay?”

“I’ll be down in like, ten minutes!”

“What?!”

“Actually, make that twenty!”

"Adrien!"

Sensing a barrage of questioning via the most stubborn (and the only) person he's ever dated, Adrien blurts the first excuse that comes to mind, "I'm lactose intolerant!"

The door to her parent’s flat closes with a solid thunk and Marinette stands stock still in horror, wondering if she's just poisoned her boyfriend.

~

**[Part 9]**

"And that's when I realised that I'd have to abandon my boyfriend at my house to fight this _stupid_ akuma!" Ladybug's voice ups in pitch with every sentence of her story, "Oh my god, I can't _believe_ I forgot he was lactose intolerant! I must have poured regular milk into his coffee instead of rice milk like an _idiot!"_

"I'm sure he'll forgive you," Chat rips the driver’s side door off of the closest police cruiser and uses it as a shield against the flaming projectiles flying their way, "You guys are in love, right?"

"We were until I tried to kill him with lactose," Ladybug groans, snagging one of Pyromane's fiery cronies by the ankles and hauling him up and over the school towards the Seine, "He probably hates me right now and it’s all my fault! What if—”

"There are no 'what ifs' Ladybug," Chat does his best impression of Captain America and puffs his chest when his makeshift flying shield obliterates several of the akuma's soldiers in one go, "He loves you and you love him and by the sounds of it, there's nothing that can tear you _afart_."

"Are you kidding me right now?" Ladybug thwacks him across the chest with the back of her hand just as Chat begins to chortle, "You are such a _boy._ "

"Observant as always, Buga _poo_ ," Chat cackles and ducks out of the way from Ladybug's assault, dodging another rain of fireballs. She's usually not the distracted one when it comes to akuma fights and Chat has no one to blame but himself for it; after all, if he hadn’t made up that stupid excuse in the first place, she wouldn’t be wracking her brains trying to find a way to take care of him when the real him is only a few scant centimetres away, thwacking fiery minions at her side, “In all seriousness, he probably doesn’t want you anywhere near him right now.”

“I knooooow,” she groans, ducking just in time as Pyromane lashes out with his fiery lance of pure and utter inconvenience and Ladybug is well and done with the akuma at this point. All she wants to do is check up on Adrien and buy him some Lactase or something at the pharmacy because she is the world's most awful girlfriend and she needs to make it up to him somehow.

"Ladybug, do you think it's in his ankle monitor?"

Growling, Ladybug wonders why she didn't notice that before, "What’s he doing outside if he's wearing an ankle monitor?"

"Beats me," Chat notices her gritted teeth and goes in for a joke, "Looks like they need a little _Paw Patrol_ to save the day, eh Ladybug?"

The moon to his stars befits him with a glance so withering that even the sun seems to dim just a little, "Do you make jokes like this in front of your girlfriend?"

"Everyday," Chat replies truthfully, puffing his chest in pride.

"I still think she's imaginary," Ladybug rolls her eyes and snags the ankle bracelet with her yoyo, “Chat?”

_“Cataclysme!”_

~

After a brief interview with Alya, Ladybug and Chat Noir quickly realise that they need to part ways. This is business as usual, except it is absolutely _not_ business as usual because Adrien is mentally berating himself for drinking so much (lactose free) dumb himbo juice this morning, “Hey wait!”

Ladybug spins on her heel and eyes him warily, clearly eager to get out of there, “What?”

“I, uh…” Chat can practically hear his last two brain cells playing Pong on the insides of his skull, “I just wanted to...um…”

“Spit it out Chat, I really need to get back.”

“I know! I just—” Chat wracks his stupid brain for something, _anything_ to say, “Do you and your boyfriend, um...do you guys know of a good spot for a date?”

Ladybug cocks her eyebrow, “A few, but can this wait? I need to check up on my—”

“Wait!” Chat throws his palms up, “It really can’t wait because uh…it’s her birthday tomorrow!”

Ladybug’s expression softens immediately, “Oh! Well, if she’s anything like my friends, she’ll probably like that little café near the _Quai de la Tournelle_. It’s really romantic, especially around sunset.”

“Ooooh,” Chat files that little tidbit of advice for later and suddenly remembers he’s supposed to be hiding in a washroom, not making small talk, “Thanks for the advice— _ohmygodisthatanakuma?!_ ”

Pointing passed her shoulder, Ladybug flings her body around while Chat scampers away as fast as he can, detransforming with a flash of light on her balcony. Wrenching the trapdoor open, Adrien dives face first into her mattress and barrel rolls down onto the main floor of her bedroom, entirely ignorant of the horrible crunch his entire skeletal system makes at the impact. Injuries are for losers, and Adrien has decided that he’s not going to be a loser today, even as he hears Marinette down at the base of the stairs calling for him.

“Adrien? Are you okay?” she asks, her voice muffled through the door, “Do you want me to come up?”

“NOPE,” Adrien yells, hoping she’ll assume the breathlessness in his voice is due to the fictional, lethal stench of fermenting lactose wafting from their bathroom, “I’ll be down in one second! Hold on!”

He checks his hair in the mirror beside their flat door and opens it, rushing down the stairs towards Marinette. She looks terribly concerned and he feels like a dumpster fire for lying to her, except this is going to be their new normal until he can figure out how to tell her that he knows who she is behind the mask.

“I am so sorry!” she blurts, covering her face with her palms, “Like, really really really sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Adrien scratches at the back of his neck for lack of anything better to do, “Look, we should probably get going.”

“Yeah,” Marinette peeks at him through his fingers, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Physically? Gucci,” Adrien briefly gestures to all of him and swallows, “Mentally? Oof.”

Marinette cracks the teeniest of smile, and although it’s far smaller than he had hoped, it’s still a step in the right direction, “Come on, Gucci boy. Let’s do this together.”

“Together,” Adrien breathes a sigh of relief, “Just you and me against the world.”

“Right,” she takes his hand and squeezes it gently as she leads him out the door, “Maybe you should model for Gucci. At least you’d get paid for it.”

“Hmmmm,” the cogs in the space where Adrien’s brain should reside immediately start churning, “That’s not a bad idea actually.”

“I know,” she responds, crossing the street and tugging him behind her, “I just thought of it.”

“Father would _hate_ it.”

“Exactly.”

“Imagine the social media storm that would cause…” he trails off, catching her expression as they venture closer to the steps, “You don’t happen to have a relative in the fashion business who could hit me up, do you?”

“Maman has an auntie who works in the industry back in Shanghai,” Marinette replies with a smirk, their previous complications long forgotten now that they’re hatching a diabolical plan together, “I’ll message Maman once we get inside.” 

“Purrfect,” Adrien murmurs under his breath, entirely unaware of the two sets of beady eyes following his every stride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're starting to get to the good part!
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The saga continues...

**[Part 10]**

School goes off without a hitch, which is to say that Marinette sticks to Adrien’s side and vise-versa to the point where neither Lila nor Nathalie can get anywhere near them without someone running interference. Nino is the ultimate bro and accompanies his best dude to the bathroom whenever necessary, which Lila bemoans unbeknownst to everyone except her nemesis. Marinette and Lila lock eyes from across the classroom more than once throughout the day as if the Italian’s plans are written in Sharpie across her forehead; Marinette can see right through her ‘concerned friend’ façade because there’s not enough Poupourri on this planet to keep Marinette from smelling the crap that Lila’s been shovelling all day.

Adrien spots Nathalie hovering at lunch and is relieved to see Tom thundering up the stairs with his big, jovial strides to greet them. He guides them back to the bakery and Marinette barely resists the urge to stick her tongue out at Adrien’s former childminder, baring her teeth instead. Nathalie almost looks like she’s going to laugh except she has absolutely nothing to laugh about; Marinette’s family is going to make sure they have a whole world of hurt coming their way and nothing is going to stop them.

“I like this plan,” Daohan Cheng considers the tea in his cup for a moment before sipping it, casually chatting with Sabine as the three of them enter from the stairway, “Did Lin respond?”

“Of course she did,” Sabine smirks over the rim of the porcelain mug, “She never sleeps, you know that. She’s calling up modelling agencies here in Paris as we speak.”

“Nice thinking by the way, _mon chou_ ,” Tom gives his daughter a fist bump before joining his wife on the other side of the countertop. There are bao still steaming on a platter between them and Adrien follows the wonderful scent of bean paste and rice flour into the kitchen.

“May I have one of these?” he asks, pointing to the buns.

“Of course,” Sabine smiles and opens her palm towards the plate, “Our food is your food. There’s no need to ask.”

“Thank you,” Adrien immediately stuffs his cheeks, his teeth tearing away at the chewy, elastic dough, “Ohmygod, theesh arr goo!”

Laughing, Marinette snags his hand as he goes to reach for another, “Finish that one first before you choke.”

“Anyway,” Daohan intervenes, watching with mirth as the white boy his niece is infatuated with tries not to suffocate himself, “I need you to sign a few things when you’re done…chewing.”

Adrien gulps down the rest of his bun, his cheeks turning pink, “Sorry. What’s this about?”

“If we’re going ahead with the court proceedings, we need to make it official,” Daohan hands him a pen and invites Tom to look over the document as well, “Tom will cosign for you.”

“Looks crystal clear to me!” Tom scratches his signature across the witness line, “You’re suing Gabriel for non payment of services, which goes way beyond small claims court. Just look at these figures!”

“I made an assessment based on the documents you collected,” Daohan points to another printed PDF on the countertop and hands it to Adrien, “Mme. Sancoeur meticulously documented the times and dates of every single one of your shoots since you started modelling as a child. If we base your wages on the average salary of a child model, which waxes and wanes depending on age and gender, we can assume that Gabriel owes you roughly €267,894.88.”

Adrien’s lips part with a soft, startled sound.

“That’s a lot of money,” Tom says in the largest understatement of the century. Adrien blinks owlishly at the form in his hands before looking over at Daohan once again.

“Is there a chance we could win?”

Daohan smirks, “With evidence like this in our favour, your father’s business doesn’t stand a chance.”

~

Adrien might understand Mandarin, but he doesn’t have the slightest clue what Sabine is saying as she chatters away at lightning speed with Cheng Lin, the one of the chief editors of Vogue China. Watching in awe, Adrien simply shakes his head in wonderment; how the heck did Marinette know so many important people?

“They’re Chinese,” Tom sits down beside him on the couch, “They have _connections_.”

Adrien agrees without blinking, “Have you ever been to China?”

“Yup,” Tom drinks enough respect women juice not to be threatened by the fact that he can hardly understand what his wife is saying, “Do you know the film Crazy Rich Asians?”

Adrien turns towards Tom, utterly gobsmacked, “Noooo…”

“Oh yes,” Tom chuckles, patting his knee, “It was the first time I ever saw a Bugatti in real life.”

“I’ve _always_ wanted to sit in one of those,” Adrien’s heart skips a beat at the mention of his favourite car, “One of my father’s clients owned a red one and _oh,_ the way she purred…”

“Well, I saw ten of them,” Tom grins, “All pulling up to the same party I was invited to. At a mansion. A Cheng mansion. As in, Sabine’s family mansion.”

Adrien’s jaw unhinges, “No way.”

“Yes way,” Tom remembers the scene fondly, “When she was nineteen, Sabine moved here to get away from the hustle and bustle of life in Shanghai. Paris is and always has been a paradise for artists and her family wanted her to get the best education possible so when she insisted on studying fine arts at the University of Paris, they supported her one hundred percent…that is, until she fell head over heels with an Italian baker.”

Adrien sits at the edge of his seat, “What happened next?”

“Naturally, they demanded she come back to China,” Tom explains, shrugging his shoulders, “And she did, for a few months at least, but I knew in my heart that she would always come back for me.”

“That is _so romantic_ ,” Adrien gushes, his chest constricting with the enchantment of it all, “And is that when you—”

"—asked her to marry me on a date to André’s ice cream cart? You bet,” Tom presses his hand against his enormous, burly chest, “It was the third best day of my life when she said yes.”

Adrien leans forwards, “What was the second best day?”

“When I married Sabine beneath the Chinese pagoda in the _Parc de Bagatelle.”_

“And the first?”

“When I held Marinette in my arms for the very first time.”

Adrien’s stomach quivers. His heart sings.

“Sabine and I were always meant to be together, even half a world apart,” Tom pats him on the shoulders, getting a little teary-eyed himself. 

“Wow…” Adrien trails off as the entire apartment seems to overflow with sparkles and pretty pink lights, “What’s your secret?”

“To a happy marriage?”

Adrien nods eagerly, hanging on the edge of his seat.

“Well,” Tom scratches his mustache in contemplation, “I like to think we’re still together because of my good looks and debonaire personality, but if you were to ask Sabine, I think she’d tell you that it has to do with communication. There are no secrets between us.”

“Huh,” Adrien’s heart wheezes a little with the stark realisation that he’s keeping two enormous and potentially dangerous secrets from Marinette, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

~

Tuesday rolls around and Adrien wakes up to three separate offers from three different modelling agencies. He’s surprised to see an American one on the list, not to mention there’s a Chinese agency dying to sign him. The bonuses are insane on that offer and Adrien is mightily tempted to scratch his signature onto the paperwork right then and there.

“Take a little time to think about it,” Sabine assures him, slipping her reading glasses back into her apron pocket, “I’ll go over the fine print with you today after school. Daohan thinks jumping right back into the swing of things will make quite an impact on the judges,” she forms guillemets with her fingers, “'Once served everything on a silver platter, Adrien Agreste has now blossomed into a self made model within the highest echelons of the fashion world.’ Daohan thinks it will prove that you’re not just doing this for the money, but for an investment in your future.”

“Well, I’ve always liked modelling,” Adrien explains, crunching down on an oatmeal cookie, “I think I’m pretty good at it so I’m kind of excited to try new things and wear new clothes.”

Sabine smiles, “Knowing the industry, I can only imagine your first shoot will be the opposite of radiant and dreamy.”

Adrien laughs in earnest, “Maybe I’ll get to wear leather and pose with tigers!”

Still half asleep, Marinette begins to stir beside him, “I love tigers.”

“Yeah?” Adrien smiles fondly, completely and unabashedly in love with the sleep frumpled queen of his heart slumping over her kitchen stool, “I’ll make sure I take pictures.”

“A selfie,” she misses her mouth as she tries to bite into her croissant with her eyes closed, “But don’t get eaten.”

“Got it,” he smirks, turning back to Sabine, “So is Daohan formally submitting the lawsuit today?”

“He is,” Sabine responds, her gaze never wavering, “It may pose some challenges, especially once the press gets a hold of it.”

“The press has been on my side this whole time though,” Adrien shrugs, uneasiness churning in his gut.

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Sabine glances at her mobile and smiles at him with motherly reassurance, “Something is telling me that today is going to be a good day.”

~

**[Part 11]**

The next few days can be described in a vast amount of different ways depending on your point of view. In Gabriel’s case, clusterfuck doesn’t nearly have the usual finesse his vocabulary fervently demands, but it’s a fitting metaphor nonetheless. 

Stewing in his office, the man behind the international fashion brand violently flings his mobile phone across the room after another heated argument with his investors. He _pays_ his stupid employees plenty of money and _no_ , he doesn’t particularly feel keen on doing a tax audit to assess his finances halfway through the year, thank you very much.

"Sir, do you still want me to put the order through for Dubai?”

“Does it _look_ like I want you to put the order through for Dubai, Nathalie?!”

From the atelier’s doorway, The Gorilla quirks his lips.

“What are you still doing here?” Gabriel hisses, flicking his wrist at the bodyguard with all of the flippant disdain of a privileged white man who’s used to always getting what he wants, “Get out of my sight and don’t come back until you’ve acquired my asset!”

The manservant disappears through the threshold and Gabriel snaps his stylus in two just for the sheer drama if it, “The moment my son is back under this roof, we are going to akumatize half of this city in retaliation, consequences be damned!”

Nathalie, having heard the same sentence word for word at least six times this hour alone, deadpans, “Sir, there’s nothing stopping you from akumatizing someone now.”

“I’ve been fielding calls and running damage control all day in case you haven’t noticed,” Gabriel barks, throwing the broken pieces of his stylus into the air, “Damn it!”

Sighing, Nathalie simply adjusts her sleeves, “Shall I have IT send over a box of supplies before you break the rest of them?”

Gabriel’s snarl is frankly terrifying, "Perhaps you should spend more time trying to find a way to get out of this mess and less time making jokes!”

“You hired me based on my ability to multitask,” Nathalie snaps back, the lenses of her glasses flashing in the sunlight pouring in through the atelier’s windows, “You wouldn’t want to lose another asset, now would you?”

Nathalie isn’t going anywhere and they both know it, but the empty threat still rattles his already impassioned disposition, “Just postpone the request from Dubai. Tell them to put the rest on back order and stop harassing our branch until this scandal is behind me.”

“Noted.”

Gabriel glances at the shattered remains of his iPhone 11 Pro and stares daggers at it in the hopes that his glower might just scare the unsentient piece of technology into repairing itself. How dare another thing fail him so spectacularly? He has done absolutely _nothing_ wrong! All he does is work endlessly for his business and his family, so why is this happening to him? He doesn’t deserve any of this!

(Somewhere, an excitable pantheon of deities rips open a bag of popcorn and slaps another Draw 4 card down on Gabriel’s paltry existence.)

~

Fresh from his first photoshoot, Adrien is proud to announce that he’s become the newest face to sign with Exclusive Models International. He’s already booked for one more shoot in the next seven days along with two fittings and three auditions.

“The photographer who shot me was such a professional,” Adrien gushes as he crosses the city in an Uber with Marinette and Sabine sandwiching him on either side, “Sang-hua said I have perfect glass skin and that the company manager was very impressed with my look.”

“That’s amazing!” Marinette snuggles up to his side and inhales, breathing in the scent of his deodorant and shampoo, “I knew they would love you!”

“I only did so well because I knew you believed in me,” Adrien presses a kiss to the crown of her head, “I was so nervous. It was like a whole new world! I’ve never been on an open set before with other models and photographers all over the place. Sang-hua explained that this is the brand’s first campaign in Europe and they’ll be expanding to North America next year.”

“That’s exciting!” Marinette could listen to him talk about fashion all day and he knows it, “Tell me about the designs!”

“Think Tibaeg but more structured and less whimsical,” Adrien explains, savouring the warmth from Marinette’s embrace, “You would have loved some of the patterns I got to wear.”

They continue to discuss fashion for the rest of the ride home, having chosen the Uber instead of the usual trip on the Métro. Sabine would rather be safe than sorry, especially after the threat Gabriel had delivered to then just this morning through registered mail.

She hasn’t told Adrien or Marinette yet but the typed piece of paper sits like a heavy bounder in her handbag. This man is clearly dangerous and while Sabine intends on fighting fire with fire, she doesn’t yet have enough proof to go to the police. Clearly the fashion mogul’s lawyer had polished away some of the words that Gabriel clearly wanted to say to her and Tom, leaving her with a threatening letter laced with just enough jargon to come off as pleasant.

Sabine sighs quietly as they pull up to the bakery, spotting Tom waving from the curbside. They don’t go anywhere alone anymore in case one of Gabriel’s cronies try and snatch Adrien out from beneath their noses, which is still very much a possibility after this most recent correspondence. It’s Saturday now and although Adrien hadn’t been approached at school at all last week, she can’t guarantee his freedom in the weeks to come.

Tom shares her worry as they crawl into bed that evening, latching the windows and syncing the security cameras just in case they’d been tampered with. Sabine checks her phone one last time and smiles at the flurry of excited messages that had flooded her inbox in the last couple days; a trip to Shanghai after school lets out for summer would be a great vacation for all of them.

~

**[Part 12]**

"It's been really weird, not having any akuma attacks since Monday."

"Yeah," Marinette replies, running a brush through her hair, "I think the quiet is getting to Alya. She's been posting old photos on the Ladyblog all day."

"It's kind of nice though, isn't it?" Adrien cradles the back of his skull in his palms, watching her from his air mattress, "Maybe Le Papillon finally found something better to do."

"That, or he's planning something."

The low dread in her voice throws him off, "You think he's planning an attack?"

"The last time he went this long without an akuma was right before Heroes Day," Marinette points out, setting her brush down upon her bedside table, "And we all know how bad that was."

"I didn't think of that," Adrien traces her drawn expression with his eyes, the taut line of her lips, "That kind of puts things into perspective."

"Right?" Marinette throws her arms up into the air and huffs, "And with the way that Le Papillon always seems to target the people around us, I'm worried that we might be next!"

"Us?" Adrien gapes, "You think we could be akumatized?"

"Well, we're kind of prime targets," Marinette wraps her arms around her middle and stares blankly at her bedroom wall, "Your name is all over social media and so is mine, not to mention my parents. It's only logical that Le Papillon would try and akumatize one of us."

Adrien sits up, clutching his blankets to his chest, "We won't let that happen. We're happy when we're together."

"But are we?" Marinette's voice wavers and Adrien's heart clenches in his chest, "What if I'm not there when it happens? What if you’re in the washroom or at a photoshoot? What if an akuma comes and I can't stop it?"

"Chat Noir will protect me," Adrien says before he can stop himself, "Because if something happens and you’re not around, I know he'll always have your back."

Time freezes. Marinette inhales and doesn't exhale for the longest moment in recorded history. Her blue eyes stare unblinking, her heart failing, her blood turning to ice in her veins.

"Adrien?" she finally whispers, years later, “You...you know?”

Adrien shimmies out of his makeshift bed covers and lets his instincts guide him, "I've known for months, Marinette. Your secret is safe with me, you can trust me with your life."

“But…”

Adrien decides this conversation is better had in closer quarters and scales the ladder to her bed, “It’s alright Marinette, I promise. No one but me knows who you are.”

Marinette, for all intents and purposes, looks like someone has taken a pin to her skin and deflated her completely; to Adrien, his Lady has never seemed so small, “When did you find out?”

“When you left your present for me on my bed,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck, “Once I saw that you and Ladybug were one and the same, I realised that you weren’t just a friend to me. I’d always felt as if you meant more to me than that…” Adrien stares down at his hands and takes a rapid, shaky breath before locking eyes with her again, “Your thoughtfulness and consideration towards others always reminded me of Ladybug and it was only then that I realised why.”

He crawls closer, desperate to hold her hand, “I love you, Marinette. I love you so much. I love you with every shred of my soul, and not just because you’re Ladybug. Knowing that you save Paris every other half hour and you still have time to make friendship bracelets and design clothing and help your parents at the bakery just made me fall in love with you even more. You’re like...the busiest person in the universe but you still have time to do all of this for us.”

Marinette lets him take her hand in his and her grasp is ironclad, “Adrien…”

“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” he says, pulling her against his chest, “We can just hug it out until you feel better.”

She shifts her legs a little, still stiff in his arms, “Okay.”

And they do hug, for a while. Adrien doesn’t know what’s going on in Marinette’s brain but all in all, he thinks that the first half of their reveal is going pretty well. He listened to Tom and used communication to suss out the elephant in the room. He explained his feelings to her using big, romantic words straight out of his favourite k-dramas and offered her a hug which is what the WikiHow said to do when you tell someone a big secret. He even asked Reddit for advice and they all told him to just be chill and let her talk when she’s ready. 

So yeah, Adrien is pretty proud of himself. He  _ actually _ managed to do something successful on his own!

...except now comes the hard part. Now, the only thing he can do is keep hugging her and wait until she either:

  1. Invites him to snuggle in her bed together forever until they’re married and have kids and grow old together
  2. Breaks up with him



“Hey Adrien?”

“Hmm?” Adrien tries to play it cool, he really does, but his heartbeat suddenly revs to mach four regardless, “Are you feeling better?”

She nods, her face still buried in his pyjamas, “I’m really tired.”

“Do you want me to leave? Because I can leave—”

“No,” she pulls him back and clings onto the sides of his sweatshirt, holding him in place, “Stay with me?”

Smiling like a loon, Adrien mentally high fives the pantheon of gods who’d just slapped the best wild card ever on his Uno deck and scoots in under the blankets beside her, “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I have for the moment, unfortunately. I've been rather ambitious lately with my projects (I have many on the go) and will be completing them according to interest. In the meantime, I can be convinced to come back to a project though caffeinated means and asks through tumblr, as well as comments on this fic!
> 
> Please comment if you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though it’s my birthday and y’all should be giving gifts to me, your royal highness Bronte, I suppose I’ll just give everyone a gift instead and update my Chat Blanc AU.

**[Part 13]**

M. Ledroit, for all intents and purposes, is a single minded sort of man. He has goals and he accomplishes them every time without question and without confusion. And if someone gets in his way? Well, he’s gotten enough crooks off the hook to have a sizable contact list of men of questionable means. Some call it ‘making a deal with the devil’ but M. Ledroit hardly thinks himself the sort; he’s simply a good lawyer with ambiguously dubious morals and a voracious appetite for power and black market collectibles.

Which is how he finds himself in Gabriel’s study, a small room adjoined to his atelier. Rotund and wrinkled, M. Ledroit leans back in his high backed chair and weaves his fingers together, the perfect picture of a man who loves to find himself engaged in nefarious dealings, "It's quite simple, really. Elementary."

“Not necessarily,” Gabriel counters and M. Ledroit really doesn’t see why he’s being so cross about all this. His usually manageable client has been acting out as of late and M. Ledroit has to muster up every inkling of patience in his shriveled soul to keep from snapping, “What you’re proposing could damage the reputation of my company. I can’t have investors believing that the face of my internationally acclaimed brand is fraternizing with a harlot.”

“Adrien is already damaging your good name,” M. Ledroit opens his palms, his insistence plain and clear, “We need to proceed in such a way that the media turns against her.”

“He’s fourteen,” Gabriel grimaces, “The last thing I want for the publicity of this brand is for the tabloids to obsess over the sexual proclivities of my son.”

“Fine,” M. Ledroit concedes, knowing a brick wall when he sees one, “But we need to come up with another solution that targets her, not him. Adrien needs to look like the victim of the ultimate con. He needs to look like she’s been taking advantage of his fame and using it to benefit herself and her family.”

Gabriel heaves the grandest of sighs and begins massaging his temples, “As much as it pains me to say this, I may have to use Ms. Rossi again.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?” 

“I need time to formulate the possibilities,” Gabriel runs his tongue along his teeth and pinches the bridge of his nose, “But she’s easy to manipulate and detests Dupain-Cheng. In exchange for fame, Ms. Rossi is willing to do just about anything.”

M. Ledroit adjusts his reading glasses over his hooked nose, “I’m intrigued. And of course, with the bakery and the school being entirely impenetrable by every means we have attempted, I don’t suppose a little teenaged subterfuge could hurt.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel’s nostrils flare at the very thought of Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the only person who has ever dared to thwart him. She wouldn’t be standing up to him for much longer though, not if he has anything to say about it, “I’ll contact the little weasel and see if a modelling contract would more than suffice for a reign of terror on the girl. Perhaps an akumatisation could open up an opportunity for capture.”

“An excellent idea,” M. Ledroit grins, tapping the side of his nose, “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it before.”

“Dupain-Cheng has been extremely resistant to all of my previous attempts,” Gabriel’s voice is predictably clipped, “She may be headstrong but I am relentless. By week’s end, I will have her under my spell.”

“Remind me to head underground when it happens. I hate to see the kind of spirit your supernatural dealings will pull out of the girl.”

“She will be my most powerful akuma, of that I have no doubt,” Gabriel hisses, “Too bad I will have to destroy her in the process.”

“Sacrifice is the catalyst of success.”

Pulling his lips into the designer’s equivalent of a smile, Gabriel feels his spirits lift, “Indeed.”

~

And so it begins.

_ ‘The Great War of Collège Françoise Dupont’ _ would stick in the collective memories of the students who attended the Parisian collège for years to come. At their reunions twenty years from now, alumni would still remember the time when Lila Rossi, Adrien Agreste and Marinette Dupain-Cheng went to battle with nothing but blind wit and sharpened tongues, determined to one up the other by any means possible. Black and bruised and galled all over, both figuratively and literally, the three collégiens engaged in a ruthless tête-à-tête that would prove to break even the most persistent of souls and crush them into dust.

Some compared it to the plot of Mean Girls, sans bus and reconciliation.

On the other hand, the school faculty compared their scene to more academic means and changed the foreign language novel study that year from Hamlet to Othello. There has never been a villain quite as heinous and manipulative as Iago, although there was some debate as to who played that particular role. After all, both girls couldn’t adequately explain their deep hatred for one another, at least not publicly. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, Marinette had a very good reason for hating the vengeful sadist who was determined to make her life miserable regardless of whether she was wearing a mask or not.

Lila, on the other hand…

First, it has been Marinette’s missing notebook, which was later found clogging the handicap washroom’s toilet. Then Marinette’s Google Cloud account at school was mysteriously wiped, erasing all of her projects and assignments. Marinette’s summative canvas was slashed during lunch hour and her locker ransacked for valuables while Lila was nursing her arthritic wrist during phys ed. By Tuesday of that week, Marinette was mentally drained and absolutely frustrated. 

And Adrien was  _ mad. _

Many moons ago, the naïve boy starring in our narrative convinced Marinette - his then ‘just-a-friend’ - to take the high road. He tries not to think about this now simply due to the fact that his stupidity embarrasses him everytime he thinks about it. The memory and the intentions behind it sneaks up on him and he keeps getting caught making these ugly faces because he can't contain his humiliation when his own brain decides to gang up on him, which he deserves wholeheartedly. He should have sided with Marinette in the beginning; at least then he would have seen the truth about Lila far earlier and maybe he would have saved both of them some trouble.

It all comes to a head just before they leave school Tuesday evening. Lila had just revealed her hand not realizing it was the kind of royal flush she should have kept close to her chest and Adrien caught the braggart listing off all of the wonderful perks his father had offered her as part of her new contract deal with Gabriel.

Now, Adrien isn't the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to social interaction but he's not  _ stupid _ , and he has a general gist of what his father is like. The man, eccentric as he is, wouldn't just throw a modelling contract like that at Lila unless there was something in it for him.

“Tom?”

“Yes, son?”

"Do you think he's using Lila to spy on me?" Adrien asks, enveloped in his new dad's burly shadow as they cross the street towards the bakery, "Do you think he'd actually do that?"

Marinette cringes. Tom squeezes his shoulder for just a second too long.

It's all the confirmation he needs.

~

To deny that Adrien has a certain whimsy for the dramatic arts would be like saying that cats aren’t lovable assholes covered in fur. And this cat, despite his sparkling exterior and capacity for kindness that would rival Mother Theresa, is ready to tear down castles and raze cities to protect the woman he loves.

(In hindsight, Gabriel will realise that he should have just akumatized his son in order to get him back; after all, the boy is incontestably capable of overreacting with just as much flagrant gusto as his old man.)

Wednesday morning rises with the sun and Adrien is the first to wake from a restless slumber, curled around his one true love like a tiger protecting his queen. He hasn’t slept on his own air mattress since Marinette had invited him up into her bed to snuggle after his half confession and Adrien’s heart is filled with so much pride and joy that he can hardly keep it contained; to be this close to his Lady, his moon and stars, his saviour and partner and  _ oh! _ he could go on and on. There is no one in this world as important to him than she is and Adrien would make that known today, whether the world was ready or not.

“Hey Plagg?” Adrien murmurs, combing his fingers through his hair as Marinette continues to slumbers against his side, “You wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would you?”

Holding up his hands, Adrien blinks the sleep from his eyes and gazes curiously at the nails he’d just filed down last night. They had grown. And sharpened. Significantly.

Plagg shrugs his shoulders, “Nah.”

“You sure?”

“Nah,” Plagg’s fangs gleam in the light of the rising sun, “Hey kid? Make sure you dress smart today. If you’re going to battle, you might as well look the part.”

~

**[Part 14]**

Freshly showered and as feisty as he's ever been, Adrien doesn’t bother styling his hair as he usually does. Feral cat is a good look, he thinks, ditching his usual attire for a black sweater and the Gabriel jeans he’d let Nino attack with a Sharpie last week. 

Marinette is still dragging herself out of bed when he comes back up to her bedroom and finishes their homework, focused more on his plan to tell Lila off than the linear equations he can solve blindfolded and upside down. She fumbles and moans about Lila in the background while she changes clothes behind her room divider, dreading the moment she has to sit down in homeroom without knowing what the little rat has planned for her today. Would she try and dump paint all over her chest again like she tried to on Monday? Would she pit the entire tech club against her for infecting their systems with a virus that obviously had to be her fault since it only wiped her account? Marinette laments at one of her mannequins as she brushes her hair; what would Lila blame the virus on this time? She can already imagine the way Lila will start spreading the rumour that she’d seen her downloading illegal movies in the library or something.

“Marinette?”

Jarred out of her catastrophizing, Marinette spins around to find Adrien packing up their school bags beside her desk, “Yeah?”

“Have I told you lately that I love you?”

Inhaling sharply, Marinette feels all of her insecurities melt away at the softness of his tone, his eyes shining with an effervescent adoration that turns her limbs to jelly, “You tell me every day.”

“Well then,” he closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around her waist, scooping her up into a kiss that leaves her weak and breathless, “I think it’s about time I raise the bar. I love you.”

He kisses her chin, her cheeks, her brows and temples, each peck punctuated with a declaration of love. Entrapped in his embrace, Marinette savours the warmth of his touch and tries to ignore the pressing responsibilities of her life and the tortures yet to come. Together, they would make it, even if Lila is doing everything in her power to make her suffer.

“You and I against the world,” Adrien whispers into her hair, “We’re unstoppable together. Don’t you forget.”

(And hey, if Apollo sprinkles a little powdered sunshine onto his favourite character in the limited edition ‘Keeping Up with the Agrestes’ Uno pack this morning...well, no one is the wiser.)

~

Adrien drums his supernaturally enhanced fingernails against his desk, waiting ever so patiently for the target of his ire to arrive. Even Nino can tell something is up with him, which Adrien assures him is no big deal, “I rewatched  _ Descendants of the Sun _ last night and I’m still reeling over the ending.” 

“Dude, why do you keep rewatching the same shows over and over again?”

Adrien shrugs, “Why do you keep listening to the same songs over and over again?”

“It’s not the same thing,” Nino counters, entirely convinced by Adrien’s little white lie, “Music is an  _ experience _ .”

“And Korean dramas aren’t?” Adrien smirks, keeping one eye on the door, “Oh, by the way, did you see Lila come in on the Métro this morning? I have to talk to her.”

Nino blinks at the sudden change in subject, “Uh...I don’t think so? I think she said that Millie Bobby Brown was in town and that her people would be dropping her off here this morning or something.”

“Ah, of course,” Adrien nods his head sagely and internalizes the need to vomit, “Millie and I were both interviewed for the same Vanity Fair article a couple months ago. I should DM her and ask how her meet-and-greet with Lila went.”

“Oh my god, you should!” Alya chimes in from behind him, heedless of the stunned look on her best friend’s face beside her, “Lila said she would get me her autograph and try and get us all passes for her movie premiere tonight!”

_ Is that so? _

_ Ant. _

_ Boot. _

“Really?” Adrien licks his lips, “That sounds amazing! Lila didn’t mention that to me, but that’s probably because we’re not invited.”

Alya falters for a moment, “She...uh, well yeah. I don’t think she mentioned anything against you in particular but…”

“Marinette and I are kind of a package deal,” he replies, his voice just a tad too saccharine to be legit as the light begins to dawn in Marinette’s sleep frazzled eyes, “It sucks, being left out, but I understand.”

“Well, Lila has been left out of tons of things,” Alya’s hackles rise, inciting the interest of the entire class. Adrien, while not usually this cognizant of his surroundings, taps into his senses as if he were Chat Noir and feels the tension rise palpably around him.

“That’s true,” Adrien slips his mobile from his pocket and slides his thumb through his secret friends-only Instagram, quickly finding his and Millie’s conversation from a few months back, “Lila always seems to be so busy with her charity events and celebrity hang outs. Sometimes I really wonder how she manages to balance all of that and do so well at school.”

“Max and I help her with her homework,” Alya shrugs, “It’s the least we can do.”

“That is so kind of you,” Adrien’s attention slips to his phone as he begins to type; he doesn’t mind looking like an idiot in front of Millie for Marinette’s sake, “Well, would you look at that. Millie’s responding.”

“Ooh! What did she say? Did she send a photo?” Alya hauls her entire body over the table and cranes her head around to see Adrien’s screen. Nino leans in too and several of the other students begin to gravitate towards them, all watching the three little dots at the bottom of the app with wide, innocent eyes.

Unable to contain himself, Adrien channels his inner Chat Noir and offers his girlfriend the smirk of a lifetime.

“Hmm…” Adrien taps his chin as Millie’s response pops up onto his screen, “That’s  _ so _ weird.”

“‘Who’s Lila?’” Alya squints, “What does she mean, ‘who’s Lila’? Lila’s with her right now!”

“Maybe she’s using an alias,” Rose chimes in, having found herself propped up over Adrien’s shoulder, “She told me that she uses different names sometimes to trick the press since they’re always following her around.”

“Yeah! That must be it,” Mylène climbs onto their desk, hefted up onto the wood with the help of Ivan, "She's so sensitive to being scared just like I am."

Adrien barely refrains from laughing, but only just, "I just asked her if she's with anyone."

"Well obviously," Alya crosses her arms across her chest, "She's with Lila. She would never lie about something like that."

He and Marinette share a glance. Her pallor has returned now that she knows what he's up to and Adrien craves the look of sweet, sensational satisfaction on her face when his Lady finally gets the retribution she deserves.

"Oop, she's responding. Actually, you know what," Adrien flicks down from the top of his screen into his settings, "Why don't I just cast this onto the screen..."

He doesn't leave room for argument, not that anyone would even bother. The class turns towards the projector's image as Adrien's mobile live streams against the canvas, those three little dots flickering for what seems like hours until they finally disappear.

"I'm not even in France," Adrien reads the actress’ message aloud, raising his voice above the collective gasp swirling around the room, "I'm in the middle of a reshoot in Hong Kong for Godzilla vs Kong."

The dots appear again.

**Whoever said she was hanging out with me is a liar.** **  
** **And btw your IG post about your dad was 🤣.** **  
** **I'm glad he didn't shut down your finsta.**

"You have a finsta?" Chloé asks, clearly aghast at not being the centre of attention. The rest of the class pays her no mind, however, especially as Adrien's response streams in real time before their eyes.

**thx! 😉 so just double checking, you don't know anyone named Lila Rossi? brown hair, sausage braids?**

**Nope.**

**sksksk  
** **thx MBB. Next time ur in Paris, hmu**

**😘**

The class, aghast at what has just transpired, grasps frantically for straws. 

~

**[Part 15]**

“I am  _ sososososososo  _ in love with you right now,” Marinette gushes, devouring him like a chocolate birthday cake and Adrien can hardly keep up, his whole body melting under the intensity of her embrace. She’s hauled him into that janitor’s closet again and she can barely keep her hands off of him, touching and holding and grabbing every PG13 centimetre of his body she can reach, “I am going to make you the biggest fraisier ever when we get home.”

“Yeah?” Adrien blurts, floating high as a cloud on that sweet serotonin, “Can we make it together?”

“Of course we can,” Marinette’s hands are buried in his hair as she sucks his tongue into her mouth, giving French kissing a whole new meaning, “I’ll make a hundred fraisiers just for you.”

“That’s…” he tries to speak except his mouth is far too busy being thoroughly ravaged by his one true love, “...how long I want to be married to you.”

Gasping, Marinette breaks their kiss and stares at him, all swollen lips and widened eyes, “You want to marry me?”

“For a hundred years. Or a thousand years, I don’t care,” Adrien cups her cheeks in his hands and gazes at her in the hopes that she can see all of the longing and love he has for her in his eyes, “I would marry you right now if I could.”

Marinette makes a little sound, her breath escaping from her lungs as her soul temporarily retreats to the heavens. It’s the most romantic, beautiful, gorgeous thing anyone has ever said to her and she wants him to say it again and again, “Yes!”

She drags him back down for another searing kiss, leaving them both dizzy and breathless from the lack of oxygen and the heat between them. Marinette has never been this handsy with him but then again, Adrien has never vanquished her enemy and figuratively served her Lila’s head on a silver platter before, “The minute we turn eighteen, I’m buying you an engagement ring.”

“Yes,” Marinette whispers again against his lips, raking her fingers down the back of his scalp, “Yes, yes, yes!"

“And then we’re going to get married and travel to a tropical island,” Adrien dips her, smooching her at a whole new angle that has them both seeing stars, “And when we come back, we’ll buy a hamster and live happily ever after.”

“Best. Idea. Ever,” she punctuates each word with a sloppy kiss and Adrien couldn’t care less about how messy this is all getting because Marinette is kissing him like they do in the movies but this is one hundred percent better because it’s  _ real _ and it’s  _ him  _ who finally gets to be the hot protagonist who gets the girl, "I have our entire wedding planned out.”

“No way!” he pretends to be surprised, his heart nearly bursting out of his chest, “Tell me everything."

Marinette grabs greedy handfuls of his hoodie and plunders him ruthlessly, "Springtime in Paris. We’ll get married by the Eiffel Tower under the cherry blossoms in the morning and then take photos in the gardens.”

“That sounds so romantic,” Adrien babbles, “I love it.”

“And then we’ll have our reception in  _ Le Grand Salon _ at the Shangri-La and everything will be pink and gold and covered in fresh flowers and fairy lights,” Marinette’s eyes sparkle with longing, “We’ll dance the night away beside towers of rose and passionfruit macarons and slice into the most elaborate wedding cake Paris has ever set their eyes on for dessert.”

“It will be the greatest wedding of all time,” Adrien whispers against her lips, shuddering at the very concept of marrying his Lady in a venue as lavishly sophisticated as the one she’s dreaming of.

“It will be,” she brushes the bangs from his eyes and smiles, “I told Chat Noir I’d invite him too.”

Adrien’s voice cracks ever so slightly, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she looks away, her smile soft and bashful, “Maybe, if Le Papillon is defeated by then, he can be part of the wedding party.”

“I certainly hope so,” Adrien replies, drawing her gaze back up to his, “I know he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

~

Leave it to Lila to come up with some cockamamie excuse about the Millie Bobby Brown thing. Marinette rolls her eyes as Lila puts on the crocodile tears and blames it on a mix up between MBB’s publicist and her people.

Adrien, on the other hand, puts on his best acting face and nods along to Lila’s dreadful tale of snafus and heartbreak as if he really gives a crap. Whether Lila catches on or not is a mystery, but it gives him the opportunity to look around the class and see a myriad of expressions littering his classmate’s faces, ranging anywhere from sympathetic to downright scandalized. Lila’s web of manipulation and deceit has finally become too unwieldy and enough people have had a glimpse of her dark side, exactly as Marinette had been trying to instigate all along.

Now that he’s managed to flip a few of them, it’s time to convince Marinette to fight back.

Later that night, their tangled limbs and toothpaste kisses lead to the ultimate session of scheming. Since she knows that she has someone on her side to back her up, Marinette becomes much more willing to stand up for herself in a whole new light; pointing out Lila's lies was getting her nowhere but playing at her own game? Now that's something she could wholeheartedly get behind.

Thursday morning begins with a reminder that they’ll never be able to redeem the non-redeemable. Lila is on them like a dirty shirt the moment they walk in together and one simple exchange is all it takes to push them further into the game.

“I know what you’re doing and it won’t work,” Lila mutters just low enough for only the two of them to hear, “I’m better at this than you are.”

“Better at what, Lila?” Marinette asks, eyes mockingly curious, “Lying every time you open your big mouth?”

“Stay out of my way or I’ll get you,” she sneers before directing her ire at him, “And your little dog too.”

Adrien bursts into laughter as Mme Bustier walks into the room, silencing their conversation for the meantime. Marinette draws him as a golden retriever on a Post-It Note, which he cherishes for the rest of homeroom. The plan hasn’t changed, but only evolved. They’re on the same page. It’s time for a little malicious compliance. 

Scratch that.

It’s time for sweet revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mm mm mm, gimme that salty, salty Lila goodness. Let's just say that I really delivered the sodium with this chapter.

_ [Part 16] _

“Hey Plagg?”

“Mmhmm?”

“How much cheese would it take to convince you to have a little fun at Lila’s expense?”

“Hmm,” Plagg taps his chin with deliberate consideration, his fur taking on that sickly violet hue it always does whenever Adrien puts a particularly rancid wheel of camembert in front of him, “What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“Nothing really,” Adrien shrugs, the perfect picture of sunshine and innocence, “Actually, I’m not asking you to do anything. I just asked how much cheese it would take, hypothetically.”

Plagg narrows his eyes, his lips quirking at the corners, “Does Marinette know what you’re up to?”

“Kind of?” Adrien shrugs and pointedly averts his eyes, “I mean, she doesn’t know that I’m Chat Noir obviously, but I may have suggested that I had a plan last night while the two of you were downstairs raiding the fridge and I didn’t want you to feel left out of the plan.”

“Mmhmm,” Plagg hums, entirely unconvinced, “And what does this plan have to do with me?”

“Hypothetically nothing,” Adrien responds, his guilty grin widening, “Unless you want to help me back up the fact that I told her I know how to tinker with hair styling tools.”

Plagg takes one long look at him before rolling his eyes, “And she believed you?”

“I’ve got one hundred percent in almost every strand of maths and science, not to mention I’m a model. Of course she believes me,” Adrien says, puffing out his chest, “You know, if there was an engineering course offered at Françoise Dupont, I’d probably excel at that too! Just because I don’t actually know  _ how _ to do it, doesn’t mean I couldn’t learn. I just don’t have time to watch a YouTube video before Marinette comes back upstairs.”

“Which is why you need me.”

“Exactly,” Adrien leans closer, batting his eyelashes, “Come on, Plagg. It’ll be fun! Think about the chaos! The mayhem! The destruction! You love that kind of thing!”

“Hmmm,” Plagg crosses his arms across his little chest, “I suppose it’s been a little while since I’ve gotten to strut my stuff.”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it!”

Plagg harrumphs in agreement, his bright green eyes already brimming with mischievous possibilities.

~

“Hey Tikki?

“Yes, Adrien?”

Ducking down under the desk behind him in search of the pencil he’d “accidentally” dropped, Adrien leans over towards Marinette’s school bag, “How many cookies would it take to convince you to have a little fun at Lila’s expense?”

Tikki’s face scrunches up a little, “Now Adrien—”

“Hear me out,” he whispers, holding up his palms, “Marinette is miserable and my father has been using her to spy on me. We have to do  _ something _ .”

“I know that, Adrien, but it’s not right.”

“Sometimes being right isn’t necessarily the right thing to do?” Adrien pleads, grasping at straws, “Come on Tikki!”

Tikki’s bright blue eyes narrow, “You’re starting to sound like Plagg.”

“That’s because I’m Chat Noir,” Adrien says as if it’s a perfectly reasonable excuse, “And speaking of which, Plagg is already planning something. He’s going to need someone to supervise him so he doesn’t get out of hand.”

“Oh dear,” Tikki’s expression quickly turns to horror, “This is going to be Robespierre all over again if I don’t get him under control.”

Adrien blinks, “Robespierre? Really?”

“You don’t want to know the half of it,” Tikki zooms out of Marinette’s bag and stops just short of his nose, “Where is he? I have to stop him.”

“I don’t know,” Adrien shrugs, knowing full well that his kwami had just followed the target of his ire towards the bathroom less than a minute ago, “Good luck though. If anyone can reel him in, it’s you.”

“Just like Plagg,” Tikki tutts right before phasing through the floor and Adrien sits back up in his chair, staring smugly at the chalkboard as Mme Bustier continues to facilitate students conferences on their group history projects. The noise level is just high enough in the classroom that no is the wiser to Adrien’s covert conversations, although he can feel the pressure of his girlfriend’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He gives her a little thumbs up behind his back and gets to work on his and Nino’s shared tablet until his plan can be set into motion.

Needless to say, it doesn't take long.

_ “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” _

Knitting his fingers together, Adrien doesn't even bother trying to cover the smirk on his face as Lila storms back into the classroom with her bangs missing.

(Adrien makes a mental note to buy an entire wheel of Camembert for Plagg when this is all said and done.)

"I HATE YOU!!!”

The entire classroom jerks to a grinding halt as they all get a good look at her. Lila’s finger is outstretched, jabbed in cold blood in Marinette’s direction and between it and the smoke still rising from her singed hairline, no one knows where to look.

“YOU SABOTAGED MY HAIR STRAIGHTENER!!!” she screams, launching herself towards Marinette, “I KNOW IT WAS YOU, YOU STUPID BITCH!!!”

Now, in a normal classroom environment, the teacher probably would have intervened at this point. However, since Mme Bustier has the backbone of an earthworm and the charming personality of a floor mat, this doesn’t actually happen. In fact, this spineless caricature of an educator simply lets their Royal Rumble wrestling match proceed in front of the horrified eyes of her students as Lila leaps through the air, arms raised up and ready to strangle.

As much as Adrien wants to defend his Lady’s honour, he has to duck out of the way of Lila’s bony knees first and throw his body down against Nino to keep him from getting decapitated as well. Lila's brown leather boots barely skim passed his ear as she careens towards her intended target and Adrien thanks his lucky stars for his abilities as Chat Noir as he snags her by the ankle, his sharpened nails tearing into her tights as he fastens his grip around her. The inertia from her vault across his desk yanks his shoulder back uncomfortably but it’s the only thing he can do as he spins himself around to get a better view of what’s happening behind him.

“I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!” Lila screeches as Marinette attempts to bat the liar’s hands away from her neck and face, leaning back as far as she can go. Alya is shocked to stunned silence beside her until Lila’s elbow jabs into her chin, knocking her head back with a sharp crack against the window. The crunch of bone on bone is enough to spur everyone into action as the class rises in arms, surging towards the catfight taking place before them.

Gritting his teeth, Adrien props his foot against his bench and jerks Lila back for a second time, forcing her off of Marinette and onto Marinette’s desk. The action propels Lila’s chin to strike against the hardwood with a painful thunk, spurring another inhuman scream from the girl.

“Get off of me!” Marinette cries out, finally seizing the opportunity to somersault out of her seat. Lila kicks her legs as hard as she can and Adrien has to let go of her ankle to avoid getting booted in the teeth, “Lila, stop it!”

“YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!!” Lila rolls off of the desk and lands on the stairs just below Marinette, her arms outstretched yet again—

Behind them, the tension shatters into a thousand pieces as Kim begins to howl.

“What happened to your hair?!” the class jock snorts in stitches, doubling over with laughter at the sight of Lila’s enormous, shiny,  _ naked _ forehead, “Oh my god!”

“Kim!” Rose gasps in horror, “That’s not nice!”

But Kim is far too gone, tears beading in the corners of his eyes as he roars at Lila’s expense. Alix pulls out her mobile and begins videoing the whole sordid affair, her smirk apparent as she zooms in on Lila’s raging expression with all the glee of a cat who’s finally caught the canary.

Marinette takes a heaving breath, “Lila, I didn’t sabotage your hair straightener.”

“SHUT UP!” Lila shouts, her fingers balling into fists as her sides, “YOU DID THIS!!!”

“How?!” Marinette raises her palms like she's trying to keep a pack of velociraptors from devouring her, “I’ve been in class the whole time!”

“I KNOW IT WAS YOU!” Lila takes a threatening step towards her, resulting in Marinette taking another step back. Adrien carefully slides up behind Lila, fully prepared to snatch her waist and keep her from starting another WWE Smackdown, “YOU’RE TRYING TO GET BACK AT ME!!!”

“For what, Lila?” Marinette goads her, her stare sharpening, “What am I supposed to be getting back at you for?”

“Don’t play dumb, you stupid BITCH!” Lila hisses, baring her teeth, “I’m DONE playing your little games!”

“What games, Lila?!” Marinette exclaims, “I don’t talk to you, I avoid you whenever I can. You threatened to ruin me if I got in your way so I got out of it!”

“Lila did  _ whaaaaaat? _ ” Alix’s voice pitches with excitement, zooming in to better focus on Marinette.

“She cornered me in the girl’s bathroom and told me she’d take all my friends away from me, including Adrien, if I didn’t stop accusing her of lying,” Marinette squares her shoulders and stares Lila dead in the eye, “But she was wrong. I still have my friends and Adrien.”

“And your bangs,” Kim squeaks out before dissolving into giggles all over again, “Oh god, Alix,  _ please _ tell me you’ve got this on video.”

“I’m streaming it, dumbass,” Alix grins, “It’s about time Lila got her just desserts.”

The class gasps, “Alix!”

“What? Don’t look at me,” she shrugs, keeping her camera trained on Lila, “This two-faced cheat promised me VIP tickets to the Red Bull Skateboarding Championships and then made up some dumbass excuse last minute. By the time I went to buy them myself, they were all sold out!”

“That’s no reason to hate her!” Rose comes to Lila's defense once again, “It was probably a mistake!”

“Except when I called her out on it, she told me the same thing she told Marinette,” Alix snaps back, growling as Rose stumbles back into her seat, “Lila said we were at war, so here we are.”

Lila’s ire suddenly turns on Alix, “IT WAS YOU!!!”

“Oh hell no,” Alix shakes her head with a smug smirk, “I don’t mess around with hair straighteners and girly things. Why don’t you ask Chloé? She knows all about that kind of stuff.”

“As if I would ever deign to the likes of her,” Chloé scoffs, not even looking up at Lila as the heiress continues to file her perfectly manicured nails, “And as much as it pains me to admit it, I have to agree with Kim. You look utterly ridiculous. Gabriel’s going to fire you the minute he sees your hideous forehead. Haven’t you ever heard of anti-shine mattifiers? You look like an egg.”

Adrien can't hold himself back any longer and bursts into laughter.

“I DO NOT LOOK LIKE AN EGG!!!”

“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,” Chloé mocks her, handing her nail file back to Sabrina to store in her Louis Vuitton beauty case, “From grace, that is. It’s about time someone knocked you off of your high horse.”

Lila begins to vibrate aknew, “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!!!"

At the mention of cold blooded murder, Mme Bustier finally remembers that she has actual responsibilities as an adult and pipes in, “Now Lila, let’s be civilized here—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALL OF YOU!!!” Lila screams at the top of her lungs, “AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Marinette begins scanning the windows for akumas as Adrien grapples to muster some semblance of control over his belly laughs “Calm down, Lila. You’re going to get akumatized.”

“MAYBE I WANT TO!!!” she howls, “SO I CAN DESTROY ALL OF YOU!!!”

“As what, the Egg Queen?” Chloé scoffs, “What are you going to do, make us breakfast?”

“Stop being so mean to Lila, guys,” Alya finally intervenes, her words at odds with the conflicted look on her face, “Lila, do you want me to get you a hat or something? I have one in my bag—”

“FUCK YOU!!!” Lila finally has enough and storms back down the stairs, screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs. She squeals like a stuck pig one more time before wrenching the door open and disappearing into the hallway, her cries for vengeance audible for several moments as she tears through Collège Françoise DuPont and ventures into the city beyond.

Eventually, Adrien turns around to face the classroom and shrugs his shoulders, “I guess she finally cracked, eh?”

~

_ [Part 17] _

Class doesn’t get back on track in the slightest after that particular incident, although both Alya and Marinette are brought down to the office so they can be checked over for bumps and bruises. Alya presses an ice pack to the tennis ball sized purple splotch on her chin from Lila’s elbow jab and Marinette has a few scratches along her cheeks, neck and jaw.

“Did she really threaten you like that?” Alya asks, her eyes filled with both indignation and guilt as they wait for M. Damocles to finish calling their parents, “Did Lila really tell you she’d turn Adrien against you?”

“She did,” Marinette replies, idly picking at the edge of the bandaid creased beneath her chin, “That’s why I always left when Lila was around.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t…” Alya trails off, “I should have seen this coming. I’m a journalist, I’m supposed to notice when something is off!”

“It’s not your fault,” Marinette smiles, gently placing her palm on top of Alya’s hand, “And she did it to Alix too, so it’s not like I was the only one affected.”

“Which is why I definitely should have seen this coming,” Alya pouts, “She threatened two of my friends and I did nothing about it!”

“It’s alright Alya,” Marinette weaves their fingers together and leans onto her best friend’s shoulder, “If I had told you the truth, Lila would have turned against you and tried to hurt you as well. I didn’t want that to happen to you so Adrien and I kept quiet. We didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Did Adrien always know?”

“He did,” Marinette sighs, “He was the one to convince me to take the high road in the first place but now...well, we’re pretty sure that she’s spying on him for Gabriel. Adrien already tried reasoning with her but she wouldn’t budge.”

“That little…” Alya trails off, her grip on Marinette tightening, “I can’t believe I fell for her act. I’m never going to forgive her for doing this to you.”

“I don’t think Lila’s going to take this one lying down,” Marinette grimaces, her stomach jolting at the very thought of what Lila would do to her next, “She’s been attacking me all week, but now that she’s blaming me for her hair straightener burning off her bangs…”

“Oh no,” Alya moves away, grasping Marinette’s shoulder with her free hand, “Now that I know what Lila did to you and Alix, I’m not letting her anywhere near you. If she tries anything, she’s going to have to get through me.”

“Thanks Alya,” Marinette smiles and draws her in for a hug, “I love you.”

“Love you too, girl,” Alya gives her a quick peck against her temple, “I can’t wait to show Nora my battle bruise. Do you think she’ll take me to Muay Thai classes after this?”

Marinette giggles, “I think she’ll be happy to show you a few tricks. You’ll have to teach me some next time Lila tries to strangle me.”

“Oh girl, she’s gonna get punched in the face if she tries that again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Alya gives her best friend another hug, “Soul sisters have to stick together.”

“Forever and ever.”

“You know it, girl,” Alya leans back, “Now come on. Let’s tell M. Damocles what really happened between you and Lila.”

~

Ducking into the boy’s washroom, Plagg emerges from his weider's pocket with an inglorious grin, “So? How’d I do?”

Adrien nearly melts to the floor with glee, “That was the best! You should have seen her! Did you hear Chloé tell her she looked like an egg? Priceless!”

Plagg’s face lights up like a Christmas tree, “Revenge is a dish best served crispy.”

“And all’s hair in love and war,” Adrien snickers, pumping his fist in victorious triumph, “There’ll be hell toupée but I don’t even care at this point.”

“Good thing I was here to shave the day!” Plagg’s toothy grin only serves to encourage them.

“She won’t be able to brush this one off!” Adrien can hardly contain himself, “High five!”

Plagg and Adrien begin their little choreographed secret handshake, overjoyed and thick as thieves. They’ve got Lila exactly where they want her, even if it had meant stooping down to her level.

“She almost hurt Marinette though,” Adrien cringes after a while, washing his hands as he chats with Plagg through the mirror, “I knew Lila would go crazy but I didn’t think she’d go  _ that _ crazy.”

“Ehh, it looks better on her that she didn’t fight back,” Plagg shrugs, “Marinette will be fine. It’s the akuma you two are going to have to fight tonight that I’m worried about.”

“At least we’ll be ready,” Adrien runs his hands through the dryer, “Come hair or high water, Lila doesn’t stand a chance.”

~

Broiling in her bedroom with tears of humiliation streaming down her face, Lila drives her fists into her pillows and shrieks at the top of her lungs. How dare Marinette Dupain-Cheng destroy her life like this?! Gabriel had terminated her contract, effective immediately, and her mother had been called into the office to discuss the terms of her suspension! She didn’t deserve any of this! And if it wasn’t for that miserable little bitch, she would still be sitting at the top of the food chain being served by her gullible friends left and right!

If Marinette Dupain-Cheng thought she was just going to take this defeat lying down, she had another thing coming.

Lila was going to  _ destroy _ her life if it was the last thing she did.

~

_ [Part 18] _

“The akumatization seems to be going as planned,” Nathalie mentions blandly, responding to an email chain about the fabric shortage at their main sweatshop in Ho Chi Minh City, “Ms. Rossi is tearing Paris apart.”

“ _ Egg _ cellent,” Le Papillon chuckles, honing in on Lila’s akumatized form to capture her attention, “Humiliatrix, I think it’s time you gave your nemesis a proper visit, don’t you?”

_ “I’m going to murder her _ .”

Le Papillon makes a face, “Yes yes, so long as you don’t harm the boy she’s with. He’s your prize, remember?”

_ “I’m going to make Adrien watch as I flatten her into a crêpe.” _

“If you insist,” Le Papillon’s eyebrows rise considerably behind his mask, “Just be sure to do it quickly. You still have to find Ladybug and Chat Noir’s miraculous for me.”

_ “Once she's dead meat, your wish is my command.” _

The supervillain shakes the visual of Dupain-Cheng’s horizontal demise from his imagination and turns to Nathalie, “Be sure to tell the chef that crêpes are off the menu for the foreseeable future.”

“Of course, Monsieur,” Nathalie complies, having been asked to do so many strange things that she doesn’t even bother questioning him any longer, “Anything else?”

“Is the bodyguard in position?”

“Waiting on your word.”

“Good. I have a feeling that Ms. Rossi is approaching the  _ Dupain-Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie _ as we speak.”

~

Ladybug scrabbles for purchase, backflipping over the charred remains of Collège Françoise Dupont. She’s exhausted, having chased Humiliatrix across the city twice over and she’s desperately worried for Adrien, having left him in the tunnels of the nearest Métro station with her parents. She’d known the second Humiliatrix stepped foot on the scene that it was Lila; in fact, her and Adrien had been checking their Twitter feeds all evening knowing she would be akumatized sooner or later. 

The trap is laid. The  _ Dupain-Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie _ sits empty and waiting, but neither Humiliatrix nor Le Papillon knows that.

“She’s on her way back over,” Chat Noir lands beside her, his usually bright blond hair now grey with soot, “And she’s screaming Marinette’s name at the top of her lungs. Rena’s illusions aren’t tricking her anymore.”

“Go figure,” Ladybug murmurs, taking a couple deep breaths, “Where is she?”

“Rena? Still with Carapace across the Seine,” Chat replies, “She needed to recharge and Carapace insisted on staying with her.”

“Good,” Ladybug nods, keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of movement, “We’re going to need their help if we’re going to win this one.”

“What about Viperion?”

“Can’t find him.”

“Roi Singe? Pégase?”

“Couldn’t find them either,” Ladybug purses her lips, “They were already hiding when I went to their apartments. It’s just the four of us now.”

“Damn,” Chat’s claws clack against the ruined roof of their collège, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ladybug admits, “I’m working on it. All I know is that she’s not going to stop until she finds Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Chat grimaces, “While I was luring her towards the Arc de Triomphe, Lila was raving about turning Marinette into a crêpe.”

“Yum.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind for dessert but to each his own,” Chat shrugs, spotting Lila’s akumatized form approaching the nearest bridge, “I’ve got eyes on her.”

“I see her,” Ladybug growls through gritted teeth, clutching her yoyo in her fist, “Come on, let’s show Lila who really runs this city.”

~

An hour later, nearly all of the 4ème arrondissement smolders beneath the feet of Humiliatrix and her hair dryer cum lava blaster amok. Earlier, Chat Noir, Rena Rouge, Carapace and Ladybug had been within centimetres of victory until Mayura had entered the fray and added a whole new level of problems to their already messy fight by turning Lila’s volcanic emotions into a magma spewing hair styling tool. Ladybug had sent Rena and Carapace away a few minutes ago to hide and recharge, leaving Chat and Ladybug to distract Humiliatrix just long enough for them to find their own little pocket of respite. 

“One day,” Chat wheezes, keeling over in the shadows of a quai just out of Humiliatrix’s reach, “We are going to bust into Le Papillon’s evil lair and kill him. Just flat out murder, no questions asked.”

“I’m down,” Ladybug sinks to her knees and braces herself on the flats of her palms, shutting her eyes out of sheer desperation. She’s used six Lucky Charms and she prays that the next one will be her Lucky Number Seven.

“I’ll  _ cataclymse _ the place. No evidence, no foul,” Chat says between pants, staggering over to the love of his life and collapsing alongside her, “We’ll make it look like an accident.”

“As long as Lila’s there too,” Ladybug leans heavily onto her partner’s filthy shoulder, “Now there’s no doubt. She’s been working for Le Papillon all along.”

“And to think I couldn’t hate anyone more than I hate my father...” Chat grouses, realizing his mistake an entire second too late as Ladybug looks up at him, her eyes wide and worried.

“Chat—”

“I FOUND YOU!” Humiliatrix hollers from above, nearly singeing off the hair on their heads as she blasts at their hiding spot from the sidewalk above, “YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME! I WILL DESTROY YOU!”

“Bitch please,” Chat somersaults up onto a lamppost and watches as Ladybug covertly calls on what he hopes is her final Lucky Charm, “Your outfit is so last season.”

“AAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHH!”

Chat vaults out of the way of her molten torrent at the very last second, using his baton to steady himself as he lands on a nearby eave, “Too bad your latest modelling gig fell flat before it could even start. Now you’ll never get access to the latest fashions.”

“YOU WILL PAY FOR MOCKING ME!!!!”

“With what? My Miraculous?” Chat dances just out of reach, “You and your boss have been trying to get my Miraculous for over a year and look how well that’s turned out for you.”

“I’M GOING TO DEFEAT YOU!!!”

“How?” he snarks back, spotting Ladybug holding a fork, a steering wheel and a top hat in the reflection of the window beside him, “With a spatula, egghead?!"

It’s not his greatest insult but it does the job, spurring Lila into a flurry of rage so spiteful that it completely distracts her from whatever the hell Ladybug is doing with her yoyo and...is that a motorbike?

“BYE BYE LITTLE BUTTERFLY!” Ladybug comes roaring around the corner in a scene straight out of Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album cover (minus the graveyard and overt, masculine nudity of course) and utterly cancels Lila with whatever the heck she’s concocted. Chat’s entire body enters puberty at exactly the moment she hops onto the moving seat of her pilfered motorbike and roundhouse kicks Lila’s giant hair dryer, releasing the amok into the wind with a scream so ferocious that Chat can feel it in his bones. Ladybug then hops back down on the seat and pops a wheelie, using the momentum of the machine to thwack her nemesis straight in the face and send her flying in a glorious arc of sweet, sweet revenge.

Needless to say, it takes every spare millilitre of concentration in Chat’s lovestruck body to calm his blood pressure down just enough to fish Lila out of her Humiliatrix shaped hole in the concrete, presenting the snide little bitch at the feet of his queen.

“Your reign of terror is over, Lila,” Ladybug nudges the defeated subject of their ire with her toes and snatches the akumatized wig off her egg shaped head, “Time to deevilize!”

With a rip and a flourish, Ladybug tosses the remains of Lila’s wig to the ground and stomps on it before capturing the akuma and the feather at the same time in her yoyo, purging them of evil, “You know, usually I’d stick around to help the victim but…”

“Not this time.”

Purifying the city back to its original splendor, Ladybug helps Chat back onto his feet, “Besides, I have to go find Marinette Dupain-Cheng and make sure she’s okay.”

Chat gulps, “Right. I’ll come with you.”

“No, it’s okay, really. I’ll be fine.”

“But I really want to come with you,” Chat insists, “You know, to help!”

“It’s fine Chat.” Ladybug plops her hands on his shoulders, “Go and make sure your girlfriend is okay, alright? I know you mentioned she lives around here.”

“Err...yeah, about that—”

“Go! I’ll message you later, okay?”

Before Chat can so much as utter a response, Ladybug loosens her yoyo and disappears around the corner in a flash. It’s at that moment that Chat realizes how deeply in shit he’s about to be in if he doesn’t get there first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun putting these three chapters together. With Lila finally out of the picture in spectacular fashion, we're getting to the climax of the conflict we saw in the canon episode.
> 
> By the way, is anyone else still wondering how Ladybug and Chat found Le Papillon's hidden lair? Because I have been since I first saw the episode and now it's up to me to fix it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! We're almost at the end! And we're definitely back to the plot of the (sanctimonious garbage) plot of the canon Chat Blanc.

_ [Part 19] _

The conversation more or less goes like this.

“Maman! Papa! Where’s Adrien?”

“We thought he was with you!”

“He’s not with me! He was supposed to be with you!”

Cue panic. And when Marinette panics, it might as well be the end of the world.

Chat Noir vaults in just a second too late, forgetting that he can’t just drop his transformation in front of all of the people who had crowded into the busy underground Métro station to hide from the now defeated villain. As he runs down the adjacent corridor to find somewhere to hide, people start to stare as Marinette loses her marbles in front of her parents, whipping out her mobile phone and lamenting to everyone within earshot that her boyfriend is missing.

“His bodyguard must have kidnapped him!” Marinette cries, clutching Sabine’s shoulders, “He’s going to bring him to Gabriel and then Gabriel is going to send him to a boarding school in the Alps with an evil headmaster who’ll punish him if he so much as looks in the wrong direction and when I finally find him, he’ll have PTSD just like Peeta did after Katniss saved him from President Snow!”

“Marinette—”

“I’m going to have to drop out of school and go out looking for him!” Marinette begins to shake her mother’s shoulders in her mounting hysteria, “I’m going to have to infiltrate the place and knock people out with my fists so I can break him out of boarding school and then the authorities will chase us all across the mountainside and we’ll have to break into ski villas to find shelter because they’ll be an avalanche and Adrien will be sick and scared and I’ll have to save him!”

“Marinette, please—”

By this time, most of the citizens have beat feet it out of the Métro station, leaving only her parents to deal with the Marinette sized meltdown of the century happening before right their eyes, “And then we’ll run out of food and water and we’ll have to dig ourselves out of the ski villa but then the police will find us and try to steal him back and we’ll have to run for hours and hours until we find a road and then we’ll have to steal a car and—oh my god, I don’t even know how to drive! How am I supposed to steal a car if I know how to hotwire it, but I don’t know how to make it go?!”

Tom’s jaw clacks closed for a moment, “You know how to hotwire a car?!”

_ “Of course _ I know how to hotwire a car!” Marinette shrieks deliriously, “But how am I going to get back to Paris if I don’t know how to drive?! We’re going to die!”

Sabine manages to get one arm free from her daughter’s clutches and pinches the bridge of her nose, “Marinette, I need you to take a deep breath—”

“Hey guys!” Adrien, having completely missed Marinette’s meltdown, appears out of nowhere, “Sorry for disappearing! I was just going to the washroom when—”

But it’s too late.

~

“Worthless!” Le Papillon throws his hands into the air, “Ms. Rossi was an utter waste of time!”

“Not exactly,” Mayura picks up her discarded iPad and inhales sharply, “The bodyguard has located Adrien. He’s in the Métro station nearest to the  _ Dupain-Cheng Boulangerie Patisserie _ .”

“Ah yes,” Le Papillon’s mood changes in an instant, “I can feel Ms. Dupain-Cheng’s mounting fear at the thought of losing her beloved boyfriend. Nathalie, turn on the bodyguard’s body camera remotely and instruct him to intervene. My asset has been missing for long enough and I’m not about to let this opportunity pass through my fingertips.”

“The plan will proceed as expected, Monsieur.”

“Good,” Le Papillon grins, his teeth glimmering in the diffused moonlight, “I have never felt despair as powerful as this…..fly my akuma and destroy her broken heart!”

~

Adrien glances behind him as the sounds of heavy footfalls on pavement reach his ears and he spots the Gorilla coming after him, his burly arms pumping furiously in an attempt to catch up. That’s, of course, when Adrien spots the akuma coming for Marinette.

It all happens in the blink of an eye.

Adrien turns. He sees the akuma fluttering closer and closer, unbeknownst to the Dupain-Chengs. If Marinette is akumatised, it’s all over for all of them. And more than anything, Adrien can’t bear to see her hurt no matter the cost.

(Even if the cost is his identity.)

“Marinette, watch out!”

Booking it across the station’s platform in front of Marinette, Sabine, Tom and the Gorilla, Adrien says the words he’ll quickly come to regret,  _ “Plagg, transforme-moi!” _

The bodyguard skids to a stop. 

Sabine freezes. 

Tom’s jaw drops.

_ “Cataclysme!” _

Chat Noir reaches for the akuma just as it begins to tangle itself in Marinette’s tresses, crushing it between his magically enchanted fingers. The akuma turns to dust in an instant and Marinette falls to her knees, her gasp audible as she covers her mouth with her palms.

“Adrien?!”

Swallowing nervously, Chat reaches out to hold her hand, “You were about to be akumatized...I didn’t have a choice M’Lady.”

Marinette gapes for a moment and then does him one better, scooping him up into an enormous hug.

~

“Nathalie? Nathalie?”

Stunned speechless, Mayura deftly considers her options. Hypothetically, there’s a multitude of ways she could play this but...well, her name is Sancoeur for a reason.

“Your son...Adrien...is Chat Noir.”

Mayura watches as Le Papillon’s face turns from astonished to rapacious in an instant, “Adrien? Chat Noir? My own son? It cannot possibly be…” Le Papillon trails off, closing his eyes momentarily to think. It makes sense, of course; he’s had his suspicions for some time.

Le Papillon opens his eyes, his diabolical grin seering itself into Mayura’s naughtiest fantasies, “It’s no matter. Adrien’s Miraculous will soon be mine.”

~

_ [Part 20] _

As if by magic, the entire world seems to come to a screeching, neck-breaking halt. The bodyguard freezes in his tracks, utterly gobsmacked at the realisation that his boss’s son has turned into one of his most beloved superheroes. He has at least a dozen Chat Noir action figures — some of them rare collectables still in their plastic cases — and the revelation that he’s been in charge of guarding the very boy who dons the black cat mask…

Well, it certainly changes things.

Especially since the bodyguard’s mutism means his boss doesn’t care in the slightest if he happens to overhear some of the less than savoury things he and Nathalie like to talk about now that Gabriel has gone off the deep end. It would have never occurred to him that Gabriel, of all people, was the mastermind behind Le Papillon, but that was before the masked villain came stomping out of his secret vault on the west side of the mansion two nights ago cursing into his iPhone at the branch manager in Shenzhen for shutting down his sweatshops because of "some meaningless Chinese virus".

With the bodyguard still frozen in place, our attentions now turn towards Tom and Sabine. He’s paler than madeleine batter and she’s faring no better, her hands glued to her mouth as she tries not to scream. Her daughter is Ladybug? And her son is Chat Noir? How did they never notice? How did they not see the signs?

Sabine chokes back a sob; she and Tom must be the  _ worst  _ parents in the world.

The thought follows her as Adrien detransforms, his arms still wrapped around Marinette, and no one can pry them apart now that the connection between the two of them has been discovered. There would be no force on earth that could change that except, perhaps, the one thing neither of them considered.

And it would happen sooner than they’d think possible.

~

Sabine and Tom consider themselves to be smart, good natured people. They forgive and move on. They’re kind and courteous. When a customer has a problem, they do their best to sort it out with a smile and a promise to improve for the next time.

They are not those people today.

Tom sends Adrien and Marinette upstairs to wait for them in the kitchen under the guise of having to check on the bakery in case anything was damaged during the attack. Marinette tries to assure them that the Ladybug Cure would have fixed the place right up but one stormy look from Sabine has both teenagers scampering up the stairs with their tails between their legs.

“Where’s my phone?” Sabine asks her husband with an eerie calm, her guilt now entirely awash with the kind of rage only a mother whose children are being threatened can channel. Tom, knowing full well what Sabine is capable of when someone so much as breathes on her berserk button, gently hands her her iPhone like the humble servant he is, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Tom dares to utter in her presence, watching in awe as she pounds the pads of her fingers against the glass. Within moments, she’s drummed up a conference call between several of her relatives and unleashes a torrent of angry Mandarin so fast that Tom only barely catches the odd ‘Gabriel Agreste’ that flies past her lips with such utter contempt it makes him shiver.

~

Legs seemingly woven together, Marinette and Adrien simply cannot be bothered to move now that they've crashed onto Marinette's bed after a supper riddled with confessions and long held secrets. Tom shares his grief through tremendous, never ending hugs and Sabine simply listens with an unwavering ear as Marinette and Adrien explain themselves. 

It was exhausting, but it was the cathartic release they’d all deserved.

Now snuggled together like sardines beneath Marinette’s comforter, the two teens watch endless TikTok videos in a meagre attempt to make them both feel a little bit better about everything that’s happened. The reveal is still raw for both of them and they’re dead tired beyond belief, too drained to fall asleep even though dawn is fast approaching. Sabine had given them permission to have the day off school before they had retired, not even blinking an eye when Adrien had climbed up into bed beside her daughter and faceplanted into her stuffed cat.

(There would be plenty of time to talk about the birds and the bees later.)

Sabine doesn’t catch more than a few minutes of shut eye, spending her time drinking coffee and texting her many aunties and cousins all over the globe. Their brand new plan is coming together marvelously, as plans often do when someone dares to threaten the Chengs. No one goes against the family and gets away with it unscathed; Sabine has seen it happen before to one of her auntie’s cheating ex-husbands and she’s about to see it happen again.

(No one ever did find out what happened to old Sun Dan, after all.)

~

_ [Part 21] _

It would be only natural to ponder the nature of what’s about to happen over the next twenty four hours. The kids are out of school, Sabine and Tom are both aware of their children’s identities and, perhaps most worrisome of all, Gabriel and Nathalie have discovered the truth that Adrien has been hiding all along. Gabriel is beside himself, of course, pacing his atelier like a chained dog awaiting a massive, juicy steak. He’s practically frothing at the mouth in anticipation, so delightfully eager to akumatize his own son that the prospect of trying to get Adrien to join  _ his _ side of the battle is simply too absurd to bother with.

“Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider having a conversation with him?” Nathalie asks one last time, knowing a brick wall when she sees one. As the evidence would suggest, Gabriel would rather risk Adrien splattering himself like a bug on a windshield from the heights of the Montparnasse Tower than sit down and have a heart to heart with his only heir.

“It would be impractical to convince him to join me,” Gabriel waves her off, utterly dismissive now that his plan is finally in motion, “Adrien is a dead end. His intellect, although once promising, is completely wasted on that harlot he follows around like a lovesick fool. Adrien is of no use to me now.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Nathalie asks, still focused on the headlines blasting across her iPad about the emergency closures in China.

“Hardly,” the fashion mogul scoffs, “Adrien will be no match for my superior strength and power. Once I draw him into my lair and reveal Émilie’s predicament, defeating him will be child’s play.”

Nathalie’s brows rise, “And what do you plan to do with him after?”

“Once I’ve akumatized him and taken his Miraculous, I am certain Ladybug will follow suit. Young girls like her are weak minded and easily manipulated, especially once she sees what I can do. She’ll be begging me to take her Miraculous by the time I’m through with him.”

“Wait a minute,” Nathalie finally looks up from her iPad and stares at him, “You’re going to do what?”

Gabriel scoffs, “His suit will protect him from anything I do. It’s a... _ suit _ able punishment, really. He’ll never disobey me again after this particular venture, I can assure you. And it will be his final memory of me for a long time as I will be sending him to Saint François de Sales School for Disobedient Young Gentlemen immediately. Once his behaviour improves, he can come and visit his mother when her health is restored. I know Émilie will support me in this decision.”

Nathalie blinks and slowly sets down her iPad, “The whole reason Adrien’s behaviour changed was a result of his mother’s death. I’m not sure that dangling Émilie’s health in front of him like a carrot is the best course of action.”

“Your concerns are irrelevant. You don’t have children, Nathalie, nor do you have any experience with matters of the heart. You simply wouldn’t understand what lengths people will go to to protect those they love because you’ve never been in love,” Gabriel turns his nose up into the air, completely ignorant to the way Nathalie’s face begins to redden, “I can’t imagine you ever will either, all things considered. With the amount of work you put in for me, I doubt anyone would even bother.”

Physically shaking, Nathalie excuses herself for a moment to visit the restroom. Gabriel barely pays her any mind; as she passes through the doors of the atelier, Gabriel reminds her to instruct the staff as to their preparations for this evening's grand celebration. After all, he certainly doesn’t want his true love to wake up to an empty dinner table.

~

“I love you.”

Ladybug takes Chat Noir by the hand and holds it tightly, gazing out over the skyline of Paris as the afternoon begins to wind down. A tainted butterfly floats before them, hovering a few metres away from her balcony, “I love you too.”

“No matter what happens, you’ll always be my everything,” Chat presses a quick peck to her temple and Ladybug closes her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose. Her fingers tingle with anticipation; the battle for Paris is about to begin.

“I believe you,” she whispers, bringing his hand up to her lips. She gently kisses each knuckle with a declaration of love, “I will love you no matter what. I will protect you with my life. I will always take care of you. I will always be yours.”

Blushing with maddening elation at both her actions and words, Chat turns to her and places his hand on her cheek, tipping her face up to meet his, “That was the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“So far,” Ladybug stands on her toes and kisses him, a soft and gentle embrace, “And I have more where that came from,  _ Chaton _ , as long as we get through this.”

“I’m going to sing my love for you from every rooftop in Paris,” Chat presses his lips to hers again and lingers for a second longer than he should, savouring their time together. The next few hours will make them or break them and Chat would be a fool not to acknowledge that he’s terrified. 

“As long as you use your Adrien voice,” Ladybug murmurs, her breath ghosting across his cheek, “You sound like a dying whale when you sing like Chat Noir.”

Chat pulls away with a wry smile, “I’ll do anything for you, M’Lady. I’ll buy you flowers, necklaces, diamond rings, anything at all. Just don’t ask me to bake.”

“Yeah, because we all know how  _ that _ turned out,” she bops him on the nose lightly and squeezes their entwined fingers together once more in reassurance, “Once Le Papillon is defeated and your father gives up on trying to kidnap you, I will have all the time in the world to teach you how to bake anything you want.”

“I can’t wait,” he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “Are you ready to kick ass, M’Lady?”

She smiles, a wicked gleam in her eyes, “With you? Always.”

~

The trap is laid. The scene is set.

Ladybug and Chat Noir are on their way.

Gabriel is absolutely beside himself in delight as his akuma slowly meanders through Paris, leading his infantile nemeses directly towards his lair. There would be no stopping his domination over the Miraculous now; everything is happening exactly as it should, even if Nathalie’s presence at his side is strangely absent. No matter though; he wouldn’t need Mayura’s help with any of this anyway.

Unable to contain himself, Gabriel unleashes a diabolical laugh.

And as if on cue, Ladybug and Chat Noir come crashing through the vaulted ceiling of Le Papillon’s lair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final showdown is upon us! And I do love writing Gabriel being the human equivalent of a sweaty, hairy ball sack in 100% Floridian humidity.
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The final part!

_ [Part 22] _

“This time it’s over, Le Papillon,” Ladybug prowls along the catwalk of Le Papillon’s lair alongside her partner, “Give us your Miraculous.”

Unable to contain his glee, Le Papillon relishes the opportunity to play with his food and throws his cane at his masked son. Chat Noir whacks it aside and it falls into the water, giving the heroic pair a glimmer of exquisite false hope.

“You know what they say about butterflies,” Chat smirks, so elated by finally hunting down their enemy that he doesn’t even think to consider the strange familiarity of the ceiling he’s just plowed through, “The smallest flutter of their wings can cause a  _ cataclysme _ .”

Le Papillon tuts at the pair, luxuriating in the absolute chaos he’s about to unleash, “If I were you, I wouldn’t use your  _ cataclysme _ in this place, cher Adrien.”

Chat freezes in his tracks, “What? How did you—”

Smirking, Le Papillon waves his arm in a grandiose gesture towards the coffin sitting erect within the threshold of the butterfly garden. The casket opens with a hiss and a flourish, exposing the beautiful woman frozen in time within its confines. 

“But that’s...” Chat takes a wary step forward, utterly transfixed by what he sees, “...that’s Maman!”

“It most certainly is,” Le Papillon murmurs under his breath, rolling his eyes; leave it to Adrien to state the blatantly obvious, “I’m doing this all for her, Adrien. For you. For us.”

Adrien gasps, his eyes growing wide as the reality of the situation comes crashing down on his shoulders, “Father?!”

Le Papillon strikes a pose, facing his gobsmacked son forthright. The villain certainly doesn’t expect Adrien to come crawling back to him begging for forgiveness but he doesn’t quite expect him screaming hysterically at him either. Typical Adrien; even Ladybug takes a step back as his  _ cataclysme _ begins to intensify.

“WHY?!” Chat surges towards his father and stops a hair’s breadth away, his good nature keeping him from turning Le Papillon to dust outright, “WHY?!”

Le Papillon doesn’t bother wasting his breath. Grinning, he calls back his cane and smacks his son upside the face so hard he flies into the air like a tennis ball; Gabriel has a particular affection for the French Open finals, even if he doesn’t always get the chance to personally attend them. He loves the back and forth of it though, the skill and the spirit, and he channels that dexterity now by whacking his son at the perfect velocity to propel him through the hole in the roof right across the Seine.

Le Papillon doesn’t even bother giving Ladybug a moment of his time as he leaps after his broken son, landing in a crouch at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Tourists and locals alike scream in horror and run away, leaving the entire site abandoned to just the two of them.

Or the three of them, rather. Ladybug rolls to her feet in a mix of fury and horror beside him, watching with frightened eyes as Chat struggles from his position, prone on the concrete.

“We can save your mother with your Miraculous and hers,” Le Papillon coos, as if talking to a baby — Adrien has certainly behaved like one lately, “Join me.”

Chat shakes his head, scooting backwards and away, “Shut up!”

“Don’t listen to him, Chat!” Ladybug cries, reaching out towards him, “He’s trying to trick you! You know that the price to be paid is too terrible!”

“If she loved you as much as she says she does, she’d let you save your mother,” Le Papillon sneers, closing in for the kill. Ladybug keeps one wary eye on the villain and does the same, approaching Chat like a wounded animal.

“Leave me alone!” Chat screams to no one in particular. Le Papillon beams as the severity of his asset’s emotional distress hits him like a tidal wave, umptious and divine, “Leave me alone!”

“You leave me no choice, my son,” Le Papillon shakes his head in disapproval, as if he actually expected something better. He knew from the very start that Adrien would never be interested in joining his cause, “Fly, my little akuma, and akumatize his broken spirit.”

“NO!”

Unleashing his akuma, the tainted butterfly shoots straight into his cat’s bell, “Chat Blanc, I give you the power of infinite destruction! Both of us, hand in hand, are going to take Ladybug’s Miraculous and save your mother. Obey me!”

“NO! I CAN’T!” Chat grasps his head in his hands and Ladybug runs over to him, skidding on her knees as he desperately tries to fight off the influence of Le Papillon’s spell. He cringes and cries as she holds him, clinging to every half word and whisper that filters through his ears in an effort to endure.

“Take her Miraculous, my son!”

“Fight him, Adrien! Fight him for you, for us!” Ladybug cards her fingers through his hair, knowing full well how much comfort he takes from the simple gesture, “You can do it, my prince! I believe in you. Defeat him! Love always wins!”

A piercing shriek escapes his lips as he throws his head back, his eyes brimming with tears. Staring up at the sky, he finally relinquishes, “I’m so sorry!”

Enveloped in the violet darkness, the hero emerges as Chat Blanc. 

“Take her Miraculous! Take it from her!”

Chat Blanc holds his hand in front of him, glowing with magic. Shaking and scared, he glances over at the love of his life for reassurance and whimpers as she stares back at him in shock. Her fear is palpable but she struggles through it, crawling over to him once more, “You can still do it, Chat. We can still defeat him together. Don’t you remember?”

Frozen, Chat Blanc tries to focus on her words but his mind is racing and confused, caught up in the midst of a lightning storm of static and chaos, “M...M’Lady?”

“Yes!” Ladybug takes his cheeks in her palms and holds him, brushing the tears spilling from his eyes away with her thumbs, “It’s me! Resist with all of your heart,  _ Chaton _ . I know you can. You’re strong and brave. You’re the love of my life!”

“Don’t listen to her!” Le Papillon shrieks but Chat Blanc can hardly hear him, “She’s trying to poison your thoughts! She can’t be trusted!”

“To—together,” he manages to sputter, a strange sensation taking hold of him, “You....and...I…”   


“I’m your father! OBEY ME!”

“Against the world!” Ladybug laughs, pulling him in close to kiss him on the forehead, “You and I against the world, always and forever. Nothing can tear us apart when we’re together,” she smiles, taking his dangerously glowing hand in her own, “Remember this always, Chat. I will love you no matter what,” she kisses his first knuckle, “I will protect you with my life,” she kisses his second knuckle, then third, “I will always take care of you,” she locks eyes with him as she kisses his hand one last time, “And I will always be yours.”

Something painful lances through his mind like a migraine but it’s nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the warmth spreading through his heart and limbs. He can feel it like a dose of magic coursing through his veins, melting his frozen soul and exposing it for what it really is. 

He’s fragile, but courageous. Injured, but never broken.

With a whimper, Chat Blanc turns towards Le Papillon, eyes wide and teeth bared. Delicately pulling his right hand from his lady’s grasp, he staggers to his feet and holds his arm taut in front of his chest.

“No! How dare you! Not me, Adrien! Kill her!”

Chat Blanc struggles, his pupils narrowing as he uses his other hand to prop up his elbow. His legs quiver as white hot energy blooms in his palm, swirling dangerously as he tries to keep his focus. He can hear his father’s influence screaming at him to wipe out the beautiful, audacious partner standing at his side and he fights with all his might to squash it down. Never would he allow his father to control him again. He’s his own person, his own soul; Gabriel Agreste had lost the right to be his father long ago.

He has a brand new family who love him unconditionally, after all.

So, with Ladybug and the Dupain-Chengs at the forefront of his mind, Chat Blanc closes his eyes and opens them once more, the fog in his mind finally clearing as his power envelops his entire body, “Le Papillon, I hereby confiscate the Butterfly Miraculous.  _ Cataclysme! _ ”

~

_ [Part 23] _

The aftermath is nothing short of satisfying, particularly for the viewer (or in this case, the reader). Watching the bad guys get their asses handed to them is what fiction is all about, after all; we feel better about ourselves and our own lives when we see karma take a piece out of the people who deserve it, especially when it doesn’t come at a heartbreaking price.

_ (Pulling 👏 the 👏 rug 👏 out 👏 from 👏 under 👏 the 👏 viewer 👏 for 👏 shock 👏 value 👏 is 👏 not 👏 storytelling.) _

When the blinding white light finally dims, Chat Noir is restored and on his knees, heaving great lungfuls of air as Gabriel Agreste peels himself off the concrete. The Butterfly Miraculous rests in front of him like a tombstone, sliced into two perfect halves and utterly broken. He howls, his eyes wide and furious behind his thick rimmed glasses and scampers to his feet, breaking into a run in a desperate attempt to get away.

“You did it!” Ladybug wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him tightly, pressing her face into his shoulder. Exhausted, Chat stares at the place where Gabriel had last been standing and blinks away the ghost of the man he used to worship, his presence now nothing but a reminder of how family is not always about blood ties. 

“I’m sorry,” Chat’s voice wobbles, his strength waning. Ladybug holds him as he uses her as a crutch, the adrenaline from earlier sapping him of every gram of energy he’d had, “I’m sorry I couldn’t fight him.”

“But you did!” Ladybug almost shakes him, the excitement and relief in her voice palpable, “You didn’t listen to him! He was telling you to kill me and you didn’t! Love saved the day!”

He smiles a little then, his memories foggy. It sounds like something he would do though, and he trusts her implicitly, “How did we win?”

“You resisted,” she smiles up at him in admiration, resting her chin on his shoulder, “And you did so well. I held you through it and then you aimed your  _ cataclysme _ at his brooch! We all made it, Chat! No one got hurt! And Le Papillon will never hurt another person ever again!”

“But I broke it…” he trails off, his voice weak. Struggling to stand, he ignores the beeping of his ring to pick up the pieces, “I killed the kwami inside.”

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Ladybug assures him, taking the broken shards of the brooch in her hand, “There’s got to be something in that big Miraculous book that Master Fu took pictures of…” she trails off for a moment, “It makes sense now, why Gabriel had the book in the first place.”

“I need to go back and get it.”

“Not right now, we don’t,” Ladybug shakes her head, unholstering her yoyo, “We are going home and we are going to eat a big slice of cake and tell my parents what happened.”

“Okay,” Chat surrenders, always amenable to anything if there’s sweets involved, “Can they be my parents too?”

Ladybug smiles up at him, kindness like no other gleaming in her eyes, “They already are.”

~

Holding hands beneath the countertop, Adrien and Marinette shovel gargantuan pieces of fraisier into their mouths as they explain exactly what transpired during the final showdown to Sabine and Tom. The news plays softly in the background, highlighting Le Papillon’s final defeat at the hands of their masked counterparts.

“And then I took his hand in mine and told him how much I loved him,” Marinette gushes, dropping her fork for a moment to lightly dab at some frosting on Adrien’s cheek with a napkin, “And then he turned to Le Papillon and destroyed his Miraculous!”

“I don’t actually remember it happening,” Adrien shugs, watching his girlfriend fondly, “But she’s the real hero here. I just did as I was told.”

“No, you’re the real hero!’ she giggles, picking up her fork again.

Adrien taps his fork against hers, “No, you are.”

“No, you are!”

“No, you are!”

“No, you are!”

“Is this what we’re going to have to live with for the rest of our lives?” Tom murmurs from the corner of his mouth as his son and daughter continue to bicker playfully, hearts gleaming in their eyes.

“We’ll cosign on the lease for a nice apartment once they’ve graduated,” Sabine gently prods her husband in the ribcage, smiling fondly at the pair, “Then we’ll have the house to ourselves again.”

“Oh yeah?” Tom wiggles his eyebrows, “I like the sound of that.”

“Down boy,” Sabine laughs, tugging him close for a peck on the cheek, “For now though, we have bigger cakes to bake.”

“That, we do,” Tom slices off a piece of Sabine’s serving with his fork and feeds her like he did all those many years ago on their wedding night, “Eat up,  _ mon ange _ . You’re going to need your strength if you’re going to take down Gabriel Agreste.”

Sabine throws her head back and laughs, “You know what they say about best laid plans.”

“Well, I think it’s a great plan!” Tom assures his wife, cutting himself another heaping helping of cake, “Lawsuits, scary aunties, big name lawyers. I’d hate to be in his fancy right now.”

“He’s about to get his just  _ desserts _ ,” Sabine agrees, smirking well into the night.

~

"Zeus!" Hermes hollers from the Corinthian arches, "Zeus! It's the Fates again! They want to talk to you."

_ "Yαμώ!" _ Swearing, the deific patriarch throws down his Uno deck in frustration, "I didn't think they'd catch on so fast!"

Grimacing in sympathy, Hermes hands over the iPhone XII.

"Hey Clotho,” Zeus throws his head back and flops against the cushions with a groan that shakes the tectonic plates of the Pacific, “How's the weather in the Underworld?"

_ "You've been meddling again,"  _ comes Clotho’s terse reply, _ "The Agreste family threads are entirely unnatural." _

"They were unnatural to begin with!" Zeus gestures wildly, bolstered by his many nodding family members sprawled out around the card table, "We couldn't just sit around here and  _ not _ interfere!"

_ "Mmhmm," _ the eldest of the Fates hums, sharpening her shears against her whetstone just loud enough to be painfully audible through the speaker,  _ "And we all know how well that turned out last time." _

"The Titanic was a miscalculation," Zeus shrugs, "We've been over this a thousand times!"

_ “Indeed,” _ Clotho intones, _ "However, if you truly want to make the intolerable little worm suffer, shall I suggest taking a page from the humans?" _

From across the room, Apollo's iPhone XV begins to beep, "Ooh! Dad, you're not going to believe this!”

“Hmm?” Zeus leans over and squints at the image on his son’s screen before fetching his reading glasses and getting a proper look, “Is that—”

“By the powers of Hera…” Hephaestus breathes, watching over Zeus’s shoulder, “Did she actually do that?”

“Forget Kris Jenner, I nominate Sabine Cheng as the next goddess of devious undertakings,” Artemis rubs her palm together, peeking at her twin brother’s Uno hand while the rest of the family oogles Apollo’s screenshot.

“I second that,” Athena grins, casting another wildcard onto the deck, “Now, shall we continue? This game is just about to heat up.”

~

_ [Part 24] _

Gabriel walks along the empty halls of his mansion and schools his features as he glances up at the family portrait in the hallway. Adrien may no longer be within his grasps but everything is about to change. He shakes his head with grim, unyielding confidence, knowing full well that Nathalie still wields the Peacock Miraculous; she will return it to him if she knows what’s good for her. Her blind devotion to him is downright embarrassing, but ultimately useful in this less than ideal situation.

The Butterfly Miraculous was taken from him, but so what? His identity hadn’t been compromised in front of Paris, which means he still has a leg to stand on. His business would thrive while he continues to terrorize his son’s irritating insect of a girlfriend into giving him his ultimate prize and no one would be the wiser. The police would never believe that Gabriel Agreste, fashion mogul and  _ visionaire extraordinaire _ could possibly be the evil menace behind the mask of Le Papillon. They would laugh in the faces of those stupid, idiot children. 

The more he thinks about it, the more he realises that his “defeat” is actually a gift. Adrien and his little brat would never see him coming as Le Paon, a ruthless villain with the ability to turn emotions into monsters at a whim. He would target everyone around them until he broke them down, piece by piece by piece.

“Nathalie, come immediately,” he orders, striding in through the doors of his office. He doesn’t even bother looking for her because that would simply be beneath him to turn his head and actually make an effort. Instead, he walks towards his iPad setup, growing increasingly irritated with every unanswered stride.

When his frustration finally spurs him into action, he finds no one there.

This is, of course, completely unacceptable.

“Nathalie!” he raises his voice, his tone of pure annoyance echoing throughout the mansion. When the summoning yields no answers to his satisfaction, Gabriel snatches his iPhone from his pocket and dials the number of the idiot bodyguard likely stationed outside.

The call goes to voicemail.

Something is wrong, clearly. He thunders to the kitchens and finds the staff all missing, the larders barren and the ovens cold. The maids are all absent from their posts and their uniforms hang listless, abandoned.

Gabriel returns to his office, the only room in the entire place worth barricading himself inside. He locks the doors and pounds the security button, fortifying the security of his home with metal barriers and unbreakable bars. Then, he makes his way back to his desk and sits as comfortably as he can manage with all exits in sight, and waits.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when the iPad to his left starts blaring the news without warning.

_ “This is a TVi special report. Now reporting, Alec Cataldi.” _

_ “And good afternoon. We come on this evening with some shocking news coming out of the heart of Paris. A source has come forwards with damning evidence to TVi that fashion legend Gabriel Agreste has been revealed as the man behind the longstanding criminal and terrorist Le Papillon. As we speak, the Préfecture de police of Paris has confirmed that they are moving forwards with a person of interest, although they have stopped short of saying who at this time. This is some video you’re seeing here of Gabriel Agreste’s estate in the 4ème arrondissement as police and terror units begin to tape off the scene.” _

Gabriel flings the iPad across the room and bares his teeth when the device crashes against the marble tiles, shattering into pieces. He curses and spins around as the next iPad begins to play, this time streaming through the speakers in the room. 

_ “Gabriel Agreste, who is forty one years old and has one son with his presumed missing wife Émilie, is the head designer of the globally beloved fashion line Gabriel. Let’s go straight to TVi’s regional correspondent Nadja Chamack who is currently at the scene. Nadja, what do we know about Gabriel Agreste’s connection to Le Papillon?” _

_ “We know that an anonymous source close to the accused confirmed the news about an hour ago with the police, Alec, and an APD went out to law enforcement around the city almost immediately. At this time, the police have confirmed that Gabriel Agreste is likely still in the enormous building. Personnel has been swarming the area for the last ten minutes to ensure that all escape routes are accounted for. Alec, it is hard to underscore just how important this arrest will be for all the citizens of Paris who have been regularly tormented by the terrorist for over a year.” _

“NO!” Gabriel screams, pounding his fingers against the screen of his iPhone. His entire digital system has been hacked and rendered useless, leaving him to the mercy of whoever has infiltrated his systems. Panicking, he clutches his iPhone in a white knuckled grip, sweat pooling on his brow; his only lifeline to the outside world bleats impassively, the notification popping up on the screen over and over and over…

**You terrorized us for years.**

**You dared to harm them.**

**Your pride is your demise.**

**You will come to regret ever laying a hand on my daughter.**

**And now, my son.**

**You will come to regret ever hearing the name**

**CHENG.**

~

Gabriel’s arrest is cathartic in that delightfully gratifying way we’ve all been craving. The police haul his ass out into a cruiser and it’s  _ see ya later, alligator _ to the malicious, disgraced fashion designer we all know and despise. Former colleagues and classmates come forward for their fifteen minutes of fame to divulge all of the suspicious, ignorant things he’d done to them in the past and the rags eat it up like cotton candy, eager to splatter his name across every tabloid and magazine.

The news outlets air relentlessly, covering the arrest and subsequent discovery of Émilie Agreste's body in a sarcophagus in the basement of the enormous Agreste estate. There’s nothing any of the medical experts can do at this point besides leaving her on life support, which is a decision that eventually trickles down to her only son. As the only other person named in her will, fifteen year old Adrien Agreste is granted power of attorney and honours his mother’s wishes, releasing her body for organ donation.

Adrien mourns erratically, torn between the grief of losing his father and the life he could have had if he had tried to save his mother. Her burial is quick and quiet and Adrien visits every day for the first week, laying fresh cut flowers from the shop down the road from the bakery on her grave. Marinette accompanies him most of the time to  _ Père Lachaise Cemetery _ and it gets easier, eventually; he’d long accepted she was gone anyway.

Stopping short of holding a celebratory parade, Mayor Bourgeois announces that a regional holiday will be held in Ladybug and Chat Noir’s honour to celebrate the end of Le Papillon’s reign. Chat Noir smiles through it, dutiful but not quite as cheerful as the citizens of Paris would suspect. No one quite realizes that Gabriel and Chat Noir are related, although this doesn’t stop the disgraced former fashion mogul from spouting this over and over again as he’s interrogated by the police. His lawyer, M. Ledroit, truly wonders if a plea of insanity would be a better option to get his clearly mentally unstable client out of maximum security.

Because clearly, the innocent, darling young model of Paris couldn’t possibly be the wily young man behind the black cat mask.

Anyway.

With the public side of the aftermath out of the way, we come back to the heart and soul of this story. Two teens, helplessly in love with each other, thrust into a situation completely inappropriate by a nearly two hundred year old man. Of course, one can only imagine why Master Fu made the decision to equip two children with the most powerful Miraculouses in existence but then again, after spending nearly two centuries wading through the treacle of one’s own bleak inadequacies, there’s no absolution quite like throwing all of your responsibilities onto a fifteen year old girl and running away with your former lover and  suspiciously forgetting everything you know.

_ Ahem. _

With the Miraculous Box in hand, Marinette and Adrien take on the new role as guardians together. There are no secrets between them, with the exception of all of the surprise dates they embark on and the surprise gifts they give each other. Adrien takes her up on those baking lessons and by the time the school year is over, he’s gained twenty pounds and six centimetres and Marinette has never been so proud to call him her moon and stars. 

And Adrien? He gets to finally feel  _ normal _ .

Their friends are both sympathetic and disgusted. Sympathetic, of course, because Adrien’s biological father is a psychotic megalomaniac who’s getting dragged every ten minutes by another citizen of Paris that wants to sue him for damages. Since Adrien’s lawsuit for his well deserved model wages happened before the disgraced mogul’s fall from grace, the proceedings are expedited and Adrien ends up with a  _ very _ handsome check sitting in his savings account. Tom helps him learn basic money literacy and Adrien ends up investing most of it in GICs so he can afford to save for university and a decent apartment in Paris once he marries his beloved.

For the meantime, Adrien’s living situation remains the same. Tom and Sabine have no desire to relinquish their guardianship of their new son, despite it being a somewhat unofficial circumstance. It suits both Marinette and Adrien just fine; attached at the hip, they can hardly keep their hands off of each other, let alone seperate for longer than a few hours when their courses diverge at school. Hence their status of being a disgusting couple. And they are, truly. When they’re not gushing over who loves each other more or sucking face, Adrien and Marinette can usually be found playing video games and doing homework together, their limbs tangled like a swirled nest of spaghetti. It’s innocent in the most purest of ways, which both Sabine and Tom can’t quite figure out until it occurs to them that Adrien probably hasn’t been handled since he was an infant. It would explain a lot, like the boy’s insatiable joy when Tom offers him a hug and Sabine rustles his hair fondly. 

All in all, I’d call this a happy ending. 

Tom, Sabine, Adrien and Marinette all head off on that trip to Shanghai once the school year is finished. They get the privilege of staying in Sabine’s art-deco family estate in The Bund and they spend many days and evenings enjoying the prestigious waterfront. Adrien lands another modelling contract after charming every single one of Marinette’s great aunties and Marinette enjoys an exclusive tour of Shanghai’s fashion district with Vogue China’s editor-in-chief Cheng Lin. It pays to have connections and the Cheng’s certainly have it in spades.

“Dad! Look! A Bugatti!” Adrien all but shrieks beside Tom, bobbing up and down on his toes as the guests file in to celebrate a party in Sabine’s honour. Sabine looks beautiful in a Susan Fang gown as she greets cousin after cousin who haven't seen her in ages; being the baby of the family, Sabine’s return is something of a legendary event and the party certainly reflects that. There’s glitz and glamour everywhere and as intimidated as she feels by all of the people around her, Marinette can honestly say she’s never been happier to be a Dupain-Cheng.

“Me too,” Adrien takes her hand in his, dressed to the nines in a Yang Li suit. Marnette loves the way he’s unbuttoned his dress shirt in the sweet summer heat right where his bell would be and she wishes he had it on now so she could tug him down for a kiss, “I love being Adrien Dupain-Cheng. I like the sound of it.”

“It does have a ring to it,” she says with a grin that does all sorts of things to his head, “And one day, we’ll make it official.”

Adrien presses a kiss to her forehead, “Are we still going to have three children and a hamster and live the rest of our lives together until we die side by side just like they did in The Notebook?”

Marinette throws her head back and laughs, “I can’t believe you still remember that!”

“How could I forget?!” he exclaims, flattening his hand to his chest in mock offence, “What was I supposed to do? Blow off the fact that my soulmate had planned our future together? It’s  _ purr _ actically seared into my memory!”

“You are such a silly cat,” she teases, thwacking him gently on the shoulder.

“But I’m your cat, forever and always,” he takes her hand and kisses it, “I will always be yours.”

The music swells and the throng of partygoers clamour and cheer as Adrien takes Marinette by the waist and dips her, sinking into a kiss so romantic that it would trend as the #ChengChallenge on TikTok for days to come. The camera pulls away and we’re left with one final, lasting look at our lovebirds as they begin the rest of their lives together in perfect harmony. 

Marinette and Adrien. 

Ladybug and Chat Noir.

An auspicious match indeed.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those of you who liked and reblogged this on Tumblr. I can't thank you enough for your support on there. I also want to thank you for every kudos and comment here as well!
> 
> To find more chaos from yours truly, follow me at ao3bronte on tumblr and twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr at ao3bronte to get updates for this salt fiesta.
> 
> 🧂🧂🧂


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